Some Things Are Free
by em-witchwood
Summary: Edward learns something very important on the other side of the Gate. He comes back and tries to teach it to Roy. RoyEd
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist. Obviously.

**Author's Note: **This is an AU where I totally disregard the movie.

Chapter 1

It was one of the first things he'd asked when he woke up- if you could call the first pain hazed moments of consciousness being awake. "Where is Edward?"

Riza, her arm in a sling and her eyes swollen from tears, had told him that they were searching for him, and he had nodded and turned his attention to more pressing matters: getting well and keeping his men and himself alive and out of prison.

_("I'll find that person and defeat him. I will destroy the Philosopher's Stone.")_

It was two days later, when he asked again, that Riza admitted they had located Alphonse a few days before Roy had first woke. A too young, flesh and blood Alphonse with no memory of anything that happened after his and Edward's failed human transmutation. Roy had suspected it then, but it had only been two weeks, so there was still hope. Fullmetal had done the impossible before, and he would never abandon his brother.

_("Is there something more important than your dreams?"_

"_There are always things like that. Things more important than yourself, than your dreams.")_

A week after Roy was released from the hospital Winry showed up to collect Edward's things from his dorm. Roy and Riza accompanied her, Roy limping heavily, using a cane and swallowing his pride when Riza took his arm to help him up the stairs. The Elric brothers hadn't owned much, just Edward's clothes, some books and a few odds and ends they must have picked up on their travels. Central had not been their home; home was a luxury they had not allowed themselves.

Winry had packed each book carefully, gathered up all of Ed's notes with shaking hands, making sure to keep them in order. Her eyes had teared only once, when she had stumbled across a photo album Hughes had given the boys. It was filled with newspaper articles on the Fullmetal Alchemist's exploits, pictures Hughes had snapped of the boys when he had managed to catch them unaware. She had clutched it to her chest, blinked away her tears. Then she had smiled at them. "Blackmail," she'd said.

It had been two months, but Winry still had hope, so he could too, right? Besides, "I won't die before you, Shit Colonel," Edward had promised. Edward always kept his promises.

_("Farewell.")_

In the end, it all came down to _proof_. Nothing added up quite right and no one knew where to place the blame. They thought that he killed the Fuhrer, but there was no _proof_- no body, no motive and no witnesses. It was his word against theirs. He was a war hero and a model officer with an excellent record, and with fragments of the truth about Ishbal, about Bradley, slipping out, the military could not afford to punish him without absolutely solid proof. He escaped a court martial, avoided the firing squad, and was darkly amused that despite how hard he fought to clear his name, there was a part of him that was disappointed by the outcome.

Three weeks after the charges against him were completely dropped he sat in his study at his desk with a half-empty bottle of scotch and the gun he'd never had to use to defend himself (just a snap of his fingers and they went up like bonfires on a beach, sinew and bone and melting fat, and god, the _smell_) and wished he'd never used at all. This time there were no arrays scrawled across the floor, no reek of animal blood making his room smell like a butcher's shop in high summer, no gunshots still echoing in his ears. Instead, there was a newspaper on his desk (Its title, partially obscured by the bottle of scotch, read 'People's Alchemist Presumed De-'. Under the title was a photo of Edward, scowling and staring at the camera head on, his expression challenging. His brother was a looming presence behind him.) and next to it a framed photo of him and Maes. There was the memory of a little boy's neck snapping, the memory of another boy, not so little anymore, staring at him with burning eyes and slapping his hand lightly away.

He made sure the gun was loaded.

He put it under his chin. No more Marco. No more Maes. No more Edward. No one to talk him back from the edge because there was no longer anyone who could fathom how close to it he was.

He put his finger on the trigger.

No longer a goal to allow him to justify taking his next breath.

He glanced down at the newspaper, met determined eyes. Edward's expression looked disapproving- disappointed. Roy thought, _You wouldn't understand. _Edward had been so strong, stronger than Roy would ever be, could ever be, able to get back up and keep walking no matter how far he had fallen.

The newspaper, of course, said nothing.

_Please understand. _

The gun was cold and hard against his skin. Familiar. How many times before had he sat like this, his sins bearing down on him, grief and self-disgust thick in his throat?

_Please forgive me._

From the back of his mind, Edward's ghost told him, _I can't forgive you if you're not around to forgive, you stupid bastard. _

In the end Roy put the gun down, once again not brave enough to pull the trigger. He picked up the majority of his self, tried to fit the broken pieces back together in some semblance of who he used to be. When he saw Riza the next day, she nodded once, relieved.

In his mind, Edward nodded too, grim and approving, before turning and walking away-_ leaving them_- in a swirl of gold and red.

But it had only been three months, so there was still a chance he would come back.

(There was no body- no _proof_.)

A month later, there was a funeral. Roy went numbly. It was a beautiful day. Rays of sunlight shot through perfect white clouds to begild row after row of graves. The summer air was sweet with the scent of flowers and freshly cut grass. So very different from the last funeral he had attended, which had been damp and cold with pregnant grey clouds above them. The sharp pain in his chest was the same. So too the anguish welling up in his throat.

Once the mess with Lior and the Fuehrer had been cleared up- or, more accurately, covered up- it was decided that Fullmetal was a hero, not a deserter, so Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric had been buried with full honors. Of course, Edward had always been the people's hero, as was evidenced by the sheer number of people who showed up to mourn him.

_It's too soon to be burying another friend, but at least this casket is empty._ Only Roy was wrong. The casket they lowered into the ground might not have held Edward's body, but it held Roy's ambitions. It held his hope.

Alphonse was not there. "He keeps saying that Ed's alive. I want to believe him, but sometimes I can't," Winry had said. "There's no body," she had added by way of explanation. She wouldn't believe Edward was dead, but she'd come anyway, because she just might have been wrong.

Roy stayed longer than anyone else did- even longer than Winry, who had been lead away by a silently crying Gracia. He stood and glared down at the words on the headstone: a name, a rank, a title and two dates that were too close together. _You liar, _he thought. _You liar, _and then, _I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ed. _He had watched Edward run off into the sunset towards a monster he wasn't sure he really comprehended. Roy had doubted his own ability to survive. He hadn't allowed himself to doubt Edward. Maybe he should have.

_It should be you burying me, Edward. _

Riza stepped up next to him. Her eyes were wet but she wasn't crying anymore. "Sir." When he did not respond, she touched his arm lightly, said, softer, "Roy."

"They deserved better. They fought so hard, worked so hard. Didn't they deserve better than this?"

"Alphonse has been restored. That's all Edward really wanted."

Roy stared at Edward's grave for a few more minutes. _Was it worth it to you, in the end? Of course it was. You loved him more than anything else._ "I want to see him." _I need to see him._

Riza her head on his shoulder, slipped her arm around his waist. "Me too."

A few weeks later they arrived at the Rockbell's. Pinako answered the door at Riza's brisk knock. They had not told her they were coming, but she didn't look surprised.

"General. Lieutenant." She greeted, not respectful but not rude, just resigned. "I am assuming that you are here to see Alphonse?"

They nodded. "I am sorry to intrude," Roy said, and he was. He had caused this family enough grief, but he had to see for his own eyes the result of the brothers' long journey.

Pinako sighed. It was a sad sigh, and it made her look her years. "No. It's fine. You deserve some closure, too."

_Closure. _The word echoed through his mind, and he forgot the polite train of words that he'd had lined up just a second ago.

"He… truly remembers nothing?" Riza asked.

Pinako shook her head. "Nothing beyond the night they brought their mother back… or so he says. I think there is something more, but he won't tell us." She pursed her lips. "Perhaps he would tell you."

Roy smiled humorlessly. "I can't see why he would trust us more than he would trust his own family."

Pinako shrugged. "His brother trusted you." She stepped aside, gestured them in. "Please, have a seat. I'll go get him."

They sat in the living room and waited. There was a photo on the coffee table beside a wrench and a trashy romance novel. Roy picked it up without thinking, needing something to do with his hands. Ed, Alphonse and Winry beamed up at him, all limbs present and accounted for and covered in mud. Winry was sandwiched between her boys clutching a very filthy Den, her smile carefree and innocent. Next to her Al was holding a shirt behind his back, his smile sheepish. Ed's smile was not sheepish at all, but full of impish delight. He had one muddy hand on Winry's shoulder and the other on Den's collar.

"We got in so much trouble for that."

Roy looked towards the doorway where Winry stood, wiping her hands on a rag that she then tucked into her tool belt. She walked over and took the photo from Roy, smiled at it.

"Ed had gotten the brilliant idea to give Den a bath." She laughed. "Well, he _had_ been clean, for all of five minutes, and then Ed shoved a handful of bubbles down my shirt, and Al leapt to my defense, and it all sort of went downhill from there. I think it was when we dragged the laundry down in our chase that Trisha put a stop to our mudslinging." Her smile faded and she looked from the picture to Roy.

He didn't know what to say. He never knew what to say to her. _I'm sorry _would never be enough.

"Al…" She paused, hesitated. "Al doesn't remember. He doesn't know what happened. All that- all the things they did and lost and- everything. He doesn't remember." She looked right into his eyes. "Don't tell him. Please. It wouldn't do him any good to know."

Roy held her gaze for a minute. She had her mother's eyes, filled with quiet pain and resolve. "Alright." He owed her that much at least, didn't he? And he had a feeling that were Edward here, he would ask the same.

She sighed. "If he ever remembers on his own, then that's fine, that's good. But you know how they are. If he knew that Ed- that Ed gave himself, that he- Al's too young, now. He'll just feel awful, he'll think Ed's-" she stopped suddenly as they heard the back door swing open and muffled voices, followed by a baby's giggles.

They stood, and Roy barely noticed Riza's careful hand on his elbow steadying him.

"Come on, they're in the living room." They heard Pinako say, and few moments later the woman walked into the room, Alphonse just behind her.

He was as young as the reports had told him to be, his face rounder than his brothers, his hair darker. Large grey-bronze eyes that would probably never hold the bitter cynicism his brother's had swept over them. Even though Roy had just been looking at a picture of Al as a boy, had known what to expect, it still made a feeling that wasn't awe and wasn't horror, but something painful that lay somewhere between the two, well up in his throat. Alphonse looked at Roy and Riza, took in their uniforms. "Winry?" He sounded cautious and confused.

"These are friends of your brother's," Pinako told him. "They wanted to see you."

Alphonse stepped towards them, excited. "You know my brother?"

He was looking at Roy, and Roy knew in some part of his frantic brain that he should respond, but he was too busy staring, taking in every detail of Al's appearance, from the dirt on the knees of his jeans to the carefully wrought features of his face. Riza came to his rescue. "Hello, Alphonse. I'm First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye," she said. "This is Brigadier General Roy Mustang." She shook Alphonse's small hand politely, keeping her shock behind a kind smile.

Roy didn't shake Alphonse's hand. He couldn't imagine it. He crouched down and hugged the boy. His eye was burning, and his throat was tight because it was now that he was holding Alphonse- flesh, beautiful, _whole_- that he could deny it no longer. Edward Elric was gone.

"I'm sorry," he told Alphonse, all his grief, all his guilt welling up. "He's gone. I'm sorry. He's _gone_."

Alphonse hesitantly reached up to hug Roy back. "It's alright."

_No. _Roy thought. _It's not alright. This isn't alright at all. _

It was a little over two years before Roy saw Alphonse again. Roy had got up and went to work early, done his work diligently, and then left the office late. This new work ethic failed to impress Riza, who almost seemed to miss browbeating him into submission.

On his way home, he stopped at the corner store for some groceries. The young woman who worked there knew him by name, knew roughly what time of day he would come in and what he would buy. He flirted with her, but never asked her on a date. He doubted he ever would. Roy had not dated anyone since he and Riza's relationship had fallen apart, and wasn't looking to try again any time soon.

He had just changed into more comfortable clothes- loose khaki pants and a worn grey sweater that Riza had given him when they were still in Academy. It was Riza he had been expecting when he opened the door. Instead, there was blonde hair and a worn red duster. It made Roy freeze, caught off guard. He didn't think it was Edward for a moment, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

"Um…. Brigadier General Mustang, sir?" Alphonse's voice was sweet and clear and did not echo at all.

"Alphonse. What brings you here?" He stepped back. "Come in."

"I'm sorry to bother you so late in the evening. I just got into town and I guess it took me longer than expected to find your house."

"That's alright." He led Alphonse to his living room, offered him some tea or coffee. Alphonse declined politely, and Roy sat down, gestured for the boy to do the same. Alphonse sat down gingerly on the couch across from him. "So, what can I do for you?" He watched the boy struggle for a minute, watched his eyes dart around nervously. Every flicker of expression across Alphonse's face was wonderful simply for the fact that Al now had a face that could show expression.

Beneath the sharp pang of grief Alphonse's unexpected appearance and borrowed wardrobe had caused there was pride in Edward's accomplishment.

"Well... Winry told me that brother worked with you- for you. That you were his commanding officer and you helped him get sponsored or sponsored him or... well, you know, he trusted you and..." Al rambled, twisting the edges of his coat- _Edward's coat_- in his hands. When he realized that he was rambling, he blushed and tried to sit up straighter. "I actually, um, came to ask a favor of you. I was wondering if you would be willing to sponsor me to take the National Alchemist's Exam, like you did for my brother."

Roy sighed inwardly. Pinako had sent him monthly updates since his visit. It was through her that he learned that Alphonse was still convinced his brother was alive. "So I take it you've completed your training with Mrs. Curtis?"

Alphonse looked startled that Roy would know what he had been doing. "Yes. My teacher… passed away a few months ago."

"I'm sorry," Roy said sincerely.

"She taught me all she could, but it's not enough not find my brother."

"So you're going to follow your brother's example and become a State Alchemist in hopes of gaining access to information that will help you find him?" Alphonse nodded, determined, and Roy thought, _This is Alphonse, the boy Fullmetal loved more than anything. More than his own life._ Roy would protect him like he hadn't been allowed to protect Edward. "No," he told Alphonse.

"What? Why?" It came out more desperate than Al had wanted, and he tacked on a calmer "Sir."

"Edward wouldn't want you to do this. He'd want you to find your own path." _He would want you to move on and live the life he returned to you, Alphonse. Not chase after his ghost._

Alphonse glared at him. "I'll find him. He's alive and I _will_ find him."

Now the expression was a familiar one. Desperation. _How did I ever think, even for a moment, that you could be whole without him?_ "I know you will, but I can't let you do this. Besides, two years after your brother passed they changed the rules. You have to be eighteen to take the test now."

"I…." Alphonse fisted his hands in his jacket. "This was my only clue. I don't know where else to look. I can't remember."

Roy wished he could tell Alphonse what had happened, but he didn't know. No one knew but Edward.

"Alphonse, have you ever been to Yousewell?"

_I can't give him back to you, but I can at least let you know him again._

Alphonse visited the General often after that. He would come to the man with the rumors and stories of his brother he had learned from the people Edward had helped, and Roy would tell Alphonse the version of those same stories that Edward had given Roy- minus the foul language and wild gesticulations. Sometimes Alphonse came for no reason other than the fact that he enjoyed the General's company. Sometimes he came because he had a sneaking suspicion that the General missed Edward more than he let on.

One night he got up the courage to ask, "Just what was brother to you, really?"

The General had looked up at him, thoughtful. "He was…." What had Edward been? He'd been a rude, ungrateful, obnoxious, opinionated pain in the ass. At the same time, "He was one of my men. He was a member of my team." No, that didn't sound right. Edward had been more than that.

"That's all?"

"He was my friend." Yes, that sounded right. Edward, for all his sniping and dirty looks, had been his friend in the end.

"Did you love him?" Alphonse asked.

"I believed in him."

The phone ringing dragged him out of his nightmares. "Hello?"

"General."

"Alphonse? What's wrong?" Roy sat up, immediately awake.

"I had a dream, but I don't think it was a dream at all. And- and-" Alphonse sounded close to hysterical.

"Shhhh. Calm down. What was the dream about?" Roy asked.

That was how it started. Alphonse's dreams of his and his brother's journey. Always sharp enough for Alphonse to know they were memories, but too vague to make sense. Alphonse would almost always call Roy, needing someone to tell him where the places he was seeing were, needing someone to fill in some of the gaps, needing the voice of someone who wasn't years dead- which was the only thing Roy could really give him.

"Sometimes, I think he meant for me to forget," Alphonse said one night.

"What makes you say that?" _Because sometimes, I think you're right._

"In the dreams he's always so sad, but he smiles anyway. I don't think I saw it then, because if I had I would have stopped him, but when he smiles at me it's not a reassurance. It's an apology."

Alphonse stopped calling him with his dreams after that. He stopped traveling so much in search of stories, of rumors, of any clues as to his brother's whereabouts.

"I lied," Al said out of nowhere.

The General looked up from his scotch. "About what?"

Al twisted the edge of the coat- that is how Roy thought of it, The Coat, an eye catching symbol of desperation and the brother's determination to do the impossible - and looked at the spot just over Roy's shoulder. "When I said I didn't remember anything after we attempted to transmute our mother."

Roy said nothing, but he did reach out and still Alphonse's hands.

"I… I remember touching the circle, feeling the array activate- and then I was standing somewhere, surrounded by white light and there was a Gate behind us."

"A Gate?"

Alphonse didn't seem to register the question. "Brother was with me, but he looked different. Older. Taller. His hair was longer and he was…" Al cast around for a suitable word, came up with only "Sad?" Alphonse's voice trembled a little. "No. That's not strong enough. Broken. He was broken."

"Alphonse." Roy placed his hand on Al's shoulder, kneaded.

"He spoke to me. He told me, 'You go on ahead. I'll follow.' Only he didn't. I woke up alone and he didn't come back. He didn't come back."

Roy visited Maes and Edward's graves every other Sunday. Sometimes Riza would accompany him. Alphonse, to his knowledge, had never visited his brother's grave. He refused to think his brother was dead. Therefore, Roy was very surprised to find Alphonse crouched next to his brother's headstone, fingers lightly tracing the letters of his brother's name.

He did not approach the boy right away. He visited Maes first. He always brought daisies for Maes, because they had been the man's favorite. He brought tulips for Edward, because Edward had transmuted some for him once, when he had been late for work and needed something to distract Riza with. The unexpected gesture had thrown Roy off guard and made him realize that maybe Edward didn't hate him as much as he thought the boy did. Maybe Edward, in his own way, thought of Roy as a friend, too.

He reached Edward's grave just as Alphonse was standing up. He set the flowers down. It dawned on him, as he was standing there, that Alphonse was 15, almost the same age Edward had been when he died. It had been five years. It seemed like more.

"I remember some of it now," Alphonse said suddenly. "I remember… Nina? I remember facing Scar. I remember that night at the 5th laboratory. Martel and the Fuehrer. You and my brother fighting. Dueling? You and Armstrong cornering Ed and I by the river near home. Not very clearly, and it's all disconnected. I can remember pieces of the events but can't string them together, can't make sense of them. Except-" Alphonse's voice broke.

"Al." Roy reached out to comfort Al, but hesitated. He never knew what to do when it came to the Elric brothers.

Alphonse continued, "I remember a old woman and a young girl, and somehow I know they're the same person, and even if I can't remember her I _hate_ her because- because brother, my brother-"

"Al."

"-he died. He died. I saw it. That _thing_ killed him. And-"

"Al." _Stop it. I don't want to know. Knowing won't change the fact that he's dead. _

"-I tried to bring him back. I failed, I must have failed, but I don't_ remember_, and even if I did he'd still be dead!"

"Al." Roy pulled the boy into his arms and held him while he cried. "Alphonse." But what could he say? There was nothing he could have done, nothing either of them could have done, nothing _any_ of them could have done from the moment Edward decided to get Alphonse's body back. "He did it for you, Alphonse. Everything he did was for you. All he wanted was for you to be happy." _It was all he let himself want, but you don't need to know that. _

"I was happy with him," Alphonse cried.

Roy had nothing to say to that. When Alphonse had cried himself out, Roy lead him to the car and had them driven home, where he made Alphonse eat and go to sleep. Roy himself did not sleep, but stayed by Alphonse's side all night.

_I would give him back if I could. I would do anything to give him back to you._

The next morning he drove Al to the station. Before Alphonse boarded the train, he asked, "My brother would want me to just keep walking forward, right?"

"Yes," Roy told him.

Alphonse's smile was watery. "It seemed a lot easier when he was with me." He blinked to clear his eyes. "Well, goodbye General."

"Goodbye, Alphonse. Take care."

Alphonse returned to Resembool. He wrote weekly, but he did not visit Central as often as before. His search for his brother had finally stopped. After Alphonse left, Roy felt like he lost something. It took a while for him to realize it had been the last of his hope.

The shrill ring of the phone woke him late enough that it was almost early. "Hello?" He was expecting Alphonse with more nightmares.

"Colonel?" barely over a whisper and slightly accented.

He was still half-awake and thinking of fire and monsters but the voice was almost familiar, only it was too uncertain, too soft. "Who is this?"

A sigh that hitched at the end. "Colonel. I… I'm- Is- Did it work? Is Al all right? Did it work?"

"Fullmetal?" Roy asked.

"Did it work? Please. Please tell me _something_ worked right, after all this. Please." And it was Edward's voice but he'd never heard Edward so close to the edge, never heard Edward beg and had never wanted to.

"Yes. It worked." There was another sigh, this one relieved. "Fullmetal. Where are you?"

"We're in Central." Edward paused. "I… I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm sorry. I-I-"

"Edward." Edward, not Fullmetal, because Fullmetal was such a heavy title and Roy didn't think Edward was in any shape to carry it just now. "Give me the address." A neighborhood in old Central, not too far away from the church Alphonse had supposedly been found in. "Stay there, alright?"

"Don't worry. We're- I doubt we're going anywhere."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The drive took a little over half an hour, just enough time for Roy to start doubting his sanity. The address Edward had given him turned out to be a house that had certainly seen better days, with a once white picket fence and roses crawling up the side of the sagging porch. Light spilled out of all the ground floor windows. A pretty, middle-aged brunette in sweats and a t-shirt opened the door halfway at Roy's knock.

"Roy Mustang?" she asked, and looked him up and down warily. When Roy nodded, she stepped back to let him inside. She kept a cautious eye on him as she shut and locked the door. When he raised an eyebrow, she said, "He didn't mention the eye patch."

Roy shrugged, tried not to look how on edge he felt. "It's been a while since we saw each other last."

"I suppose." The house smelt like coffee and freshly baked bread, but underneath it Roy could smell something harsh and medicinal. She led him down a dim hallway. The last door was slightly ajar. "Come on, he's in here."

Roy caught her arm. "Is it really him?"

She shook off his hand, but gently. Her expression softened a little as she pushed the door open. "Look and see for yourself."

Roy froze and stared. Edward Elric was curled up on a ratty couch, head pillowed on his arm as he slept fitfully. He was wearing wrinkled, oddly formal clothes that were streaked with dirt and blood. His face was bruised and older, thinner, no more baby fat, it was all sharp angles and there were harsh shadows smudged beneath his eyes and stubble shadowing his jaw. Roy stepped into the room, crossed the short space to the couch and reached out to touch Edward, to verify the miracle. When he felt warm flesh beneath his fingertips, he realized that until that point he had still thought he was dreaming.

Edward woke instantly at the soft touch. Gold eyes focused on Roy. "Colonel?" Still uncertain and unsure. _He thinks he's dreaming too_, Roy realized, and maybe they were. It wouldn't be the first time for either of them.

"Hello, Edward," Roy said. _You're back. _

"I'm… really home?" Edward asked unsteadily.

"Yes. You're really home." He wasn't sure what he had expected Ed to say to that, but he hadn't expected him to nod slowly, with his eyes watering and his lips pressed into a flat line as he fought down a sob. "Edward," Roy said. He knelt down next to the couch and pulled Edward into his arms, like he'd wanted to every time he'd seen the boy break down, but hadn't. He had always wondered if maybe just holding the boy and letting him cry could have changed anything.

He was expecting Edward to fight him, to snarl that he was not a kid and he didn't need to be treated like one, but Edward just collapsed against him and wept, clutched the front of Roy's shirt almost desperately and pressed his face into the junction between Roy's neck and shoulder. What tore out of him was grief. Pure, unadulterated grief. Ed clung to Roy as if Roy was his last lifeline and his feet were dangling over an abyss. Roy rested his cheek against golden hair, rubbed soothing circles into Ed's lower back, and let him cry himself out.

When Ed's tears finally subsided, Roy's legs were numb and his back was stiff, but Roy didn't care because the discomfort was just one more proof this was real. "I'm sorry," Edward said, but he didn't pull away yet. "I'm sorry. I just…" His voice broke. "I- they- it was-" Gold eyes closed tightly against new tears. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Roy said, and found the words weren't quite steady, that his own eye was burning. He held Ed tighter for a moment. He smelt like blood, smoke, and alchemy, but he was warm, solid in Roy's arms. Alive. "Don't be," he repeated.

He should have been worried, should have been angry or afraid, because he knew that the dead did not come back, that not even Edward could claw his way back from the grave on sheer willpower alone. He should have been demanding Edward show proof of who he was. But every instinct was telling him this was _Edward_. Even if he wasn't acting like Edward at all. Even if he didn't even look like Edward much- sharp edged and broken and wearing a suit. A _suit_.

Ed took a few deep, calming breaths. "I have to calm down. I have to." Roy could practically feel Ed trying to pull himself back in, push all his grief down where he didn't have to deal with it yet. "I… Are you… Is-" Ed stopped, gave a shaky laugh. "Fuck. Colonel. I don't… it all just… I don't know what to _do_." He ground his forehead hard into Roy's shoulder, and Roy felt a violent tremor run through him. Ed was seconds away from sobbing again but he was trying so hard to hold on to some semblance of calm.

Roy pulled back, grabbed Ed's chin and tilted Ed's face up so their eyes met. "You are going to come home with me." Roy thumbed at the dirt streaked across Ed's cheek. "You are going to have a shower, then you are going to go to sleep, and when you wake up tomorrow we are going to talk. We'll figure the rest out from there, alright?"

"All-" Ed's voice hitched. He swallowed down more tears and tried again. "Alright. But, there's something I should probably mention." He pulled away, wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "I'm not-" Ed broke off and looked over Roy's shoulder. All grief and confusion vanished from his face, replaced by concern. "Janet. Did she wake up?"

Roy turned his head and saw the woman who had opened the door, only this time she carried a sleeping child wrapped in a brown coat.

"For a second. I _think_ she asked for you."

Ed held out his arms and Roy moved back so Janet could deposited the child in them. Ed brought the coat wrapped bundle to his chest, stroked black hair away from a dark face and smiled down at the little girl, who stirred as she was transferred from one set of arms to another.

"Papa?"

Ed tilted his head down and kissed her dust-streaked forehead. "Hey, sleepy head," he said. Roy didn't think he'd ever heard Ed's voice so gentle. Not even when directed at his brother.

The girl mumbled something in a language Roy thought might have been Cretan, snuggled closer to Ed and hooked a small hand into the front of Ed's dirty gray waistcoat.

Ed's eyes teared again, and he had to steady himself before he replied. Roy couldn't understand the language, but he thought he might understand the tone. Apologetic. Reassuring. Ed kissed her again, and she settled back into sleep. After a few seconds of silence, Ed looked up and caught Roy's puzzled gaze. "My daughter," he explained.

In the strange, alternate reality that Roy seemed to have woken up in, that statement was amazingly unsurprising. "Blood or circumstance?"

"Blood."

Roy took in the girl's Ishbalan features. So Edward had been in the East all this time? But that didn't explain the clothes, the language the girl spoke, the accent that clung to the edge of Edward's words. "What's her name?"

"Anya."

"She's a beautiful girl," Janet put in.

Ed smiled fondly. "She is, isn't she?" He kissed her again, just a brush of his lips across her cheek, and Roy knew that this child was the reason Ed had not broken yet. This little girl was the only thing holding Ed together.

Roy stood slowly. Ed shifted his hold on his daughter and followed suit. Roy blinked, stared at the top of Ed's head. Somehow it hadn't occurred to him that Edward might have grown in his five-year absence. "You know, you might actually be able to see over my desk without a footstool now."

Ed looked confused, then realized he was now eye level with the top of Roy's shoulder. He tried for a grin and nearly managed it. "Of course." He narrowed his eyes. "Now you'll probably go out and buy a taller desk."

"Maybe."

"Bastard," Ed said, and his grin almost looked genuine. He turned to Janet, and Roy noticed the bruises starting just under Ed's left ear that trailed down to disappear into his torn collar. "Sorry for dropping in so late, Doc."

Janet just smiled. "Hey, this time there were no gunshots, and my job was left intact. Plus it was nice to see that the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated." She hesitated before asking, "Are you two going to be alright?"

Ed looked at Roy, then back at Janet. "Yeah. Yeah, thanks."

At the front door Ed set his little girl down, crouched down and helped her into her shoes. She swayed where she stood and clutched sleepily at her father's shoulder. Watching Ed, Roy finally noticed that Ed's right arm was not automail. What Roy could see between Ed's torn sleeve and the glove was flesh toned, but since it had been clutching the front of his shirt moments ago, Roy knew it was metal. It was slimmer than the automail, and watching it move, Roy saw it didn't have the range of motion the automail had.

Janet ducked into another room, came out with two battered bags that she handed to Roy. While Ed was preoccupied, she leaned in close and whispered, "He wouldn't let me take a look at him, but I know he's hurt. I think-" She broke off when Ed stood up, and when he had to reach out a hand to steady himself she stepped towards him, her face creased in worry. "Edward, are you sure you're alright?"

"I'm fine." He looked down at his daughter, who was clutching his hand so tightly her knuckles were white. "I have to be."

He thanked Janet again, said goodbye, and followed Roy outside to the car. When Anya stumbled over the coat, Ed caught her arm. "Careful there, monster." He said monster the same way most people said sweetheart. That was fine, because if Roy ever caught Ed calling someone sweetheart he would have to swear off the Drachman vodka and then make inquiries as to whether or not the shape shifting homunculus was still around.

Roy waited until they were driving away and Anya was nodding back towards sleep to ask, "Does she know Amestrian?"

"A little."

"Where were you?"

Ed stared out the window, looked dazed and distant. "A long ways away."

Neither of them spoke again until they pulled up in front of the General's house. It was surreal. There was so much that he wanted to ask Edward, so much that he wanted to tell him, so much that he would have given anything to tell him and now that he had his chance all the words seemed to have deserted him. "Come on," he said instead.

Edward was careful not to wake his daughter as he got out of the car. He moved slowly and rocked her slightly, bit his lip against a grimace of pain. Roy grabbed the bags, led Edward into the house that he had left unlocked with the door slightly ajar in his haste to fetch the blond. "You can lay her down upstairs in Al's room."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "Al's room?"

Roy shrugged. "The guest room Al always uses." He led Ed up the stairs and into the room. He turned on the lamp rather than flipping on the lights and set the bags down near the desk. The strap of one bag was stained almost black with blood. Ed's? But no, it was relatively fresh, and Ed was not injured enough to have bled that much.

"I'm surprised the Gate took them, too," Ed said when he saw what Roy was looking at. Ed lay Anya down on the bed. "It took everything that was in the circle." He worked off her shoes, then her dress, leaving her in a slightly less dirty slip. He smoothed uneven bangs. "It even took…" His eyes shuttered. He shifted his daughter so she was lying under the comforter. When he pulled away she grabbed his right arm, and he bent down and whispered to her, gently pried her fingers off his false hand and brought them up to his lips to kiss. She quieted and went back to sleep.

"Shower," Roy told him.

Ed nodded, kissed the top of Anya's head, held himself there for a second, eyes closed. "Okay."

Roy directed Ed towards the bathroom, then went to his own room and rummaged around for clothes that might fit Ed. When he returned to the bathroom Ed had gotten his vest off and his shirt unbuttoned and was tugging at a leather belt that went across his chest, looking frustrated as he one handedly fumbled with the clasp.

"Here," Roy said, setting down the clothes on the sink and reaching for the buckle. It was bent, and it was a good two minutes before Roy managed to get it undone. Beneath the belt the skin was shiny, rubbed almost raw, and there was a nasty bruise underneath where the buckle had been, leaving Roy to assume the buckle had been damaged while Ed was wearing it. Not that the bruise was impressive when compared to the one that started just under Edward's left pectoral and went down to disappear into his trousers, a painful looking pattern of purple and red. "Are you-"

"It looks worse than it is," Ed said. At Roy's incredulous look, he added, "Really."

Roy was not convinced. "When you get out of the shower, I'm checking you over anyway."

Ed sighed. "Fine. You mind?"

Still partway convinced he was dreaming Roy made his way back to the guest room to keep an eye on the girl. He paused just inside, looking between the foot of the bed and the desk chair, and settling on the chair. Once he was sitting, he turned his attention to the girl. Such a small girl, ragged around the edges, but from the way Edward had cradled her it was obvious to Roy that she was the center of her father's world. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see the slight resemblance. In the turn of her nose, the angle of her cheekbones, but that was all. The girl obviously resembled her mother a great deal. She shifted in her sleep, brows coming together as she murmured something under her breath. Roy couldn't help but grin then. The resemblance was all in the scowl.

His grin faded after a moment. He examined the girl more closely. He was no expert when it came to children, but he would guess she was at least six or seven years old. Which didn't make sense, because Edward had only been dead for five years. Gone. Gone for five years, not dead, because he was back and alive and safe and Roy was going to do his best to keep him that way.

It was a long fifteen minutes, waiting for Edward to emerge, but not long enough for Roy to get his thoughts straight. Edward was back. Edward had a little girl. Edward was _back_, looking like he had dug his way out of hell but alive and mostly intact.

_You were right, Alphonse. I should have believed you._

"Colonel?" Edward had donned the sweatpants and t-shirt, and though he'd had to roll up the pants, the shirt didn't fit him as loosely as Roy had expected. He held the bundle of clothes and his prosthetic in his arm.

Roy smiled at Ed, a genuinely happy smile because Ed was_ alive. _He could think that thought a hundred times and never grow tired of it. "Actually, it's Major General now, Fullmetal."

"And it's just Edward now, Mustang." Ed was smiling too, the expression tight but there seemed to be real warmth beneath it. He dumped his stuff by his bag.

Roy stood. "Well, let's see what the damage is this time."

Ed looked at Anya's sleeping form on the bed. "Maybe we should do this in the bathroom. I don't want to wake her up."

"Alright. The light's better in there, too." He ushered Ed back to the bathroom, steering the blond with a light touch to his shoulder and inwardly marveling that Ed did not seem to mind what five years before he would have considered manhandling. "Okay. Shirt off."

Ed grabbed the hem of the shirt and hesitated for half a second before pulling it over his head.

Roy inhaled sharply. Four long, jagged, parallel lines were scored into Ed's back. They were swollen and had just barely begun to heal over. Beneath them was a network of bruises, some old but most fresh. "You need a doctor."

"I'll be fine," Ed said quickly. "I've had worse."

It was true, and since the wounds were not life threatening, Roy let it go. "Sit down, then, so I can clean them up."

Ed sat obediently, pulled his hair over his shoulder. Roy dug around in his cabinet, came out with antiseptic, bandages and the ointment he had been given for his own wounds five years before. He reached out and skimmed his fingers over the least damaged area on Edward's back. This was not a single night's worth of damage; this was weeks of continued abuse. He traced the bruises to Ed's shoulder, down his arm, noticed for the first time the marks around Ed's wrist. Thinking back to the slight limp, the bruising on Ed's side, Roy pulled up Ed's right pant leg and found bruises around Ed's ankle.

Without thinking, he trailed his fingers over the bruises that went up the inside of Ed's leg, and Ed flinched, not from pain, but fear. It made Roy freeze, made something in his chest clench because Edward had never, ever flinched away from him before. Ed didn't flinch away from anyone. Roy thought of the bruises under Ed's ear, the tone in Janet's voice when she said she thought he'd been hurt, and swallowed. "Ed. Let me see-"

"It's fine." Ed looked away, his cheeks flushed, and everything Roy needed to know was in the nervous shift of his eyes.

His suspicions confirmed he tugged the leg up farther. There was a hand shaped bruise just above Ed's knee. Ed grabbed his wrist. "Edward. Let me see or I am calling a doctor."

Ed looked embarrassed and slightly sick. "She- my wife looked. She said it would be fine. That- it- she used something. It was days ago. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even hurt that much anymore."

Roy bit back rage. Edward had been beaten, raped, and dragged through who knew what it certainly _mattered_. "Edward-"

Ed's hand tightened on his wrist. "Roy."

Roy almost started. Edward had never to his knowledge called him by his first name before. Had certainly never said it like _that_- raw and tired and just shy of pleading.

The younger man leaned forward until his forehead rested against the top of Roy's head. "Please."

Roy tugged the pant leg back down.

Ed sighed, his breath gusting over the top of Roy's ear. "Thank you." He pulled away, grateful and relieved.

"Who did this to you?" It was hard to keep the rage- and where had it come from? Edward had been hurt so many times before and Roy had been nothing but a little guilty, a little concerned- down, out of his voice.

"An undead asshole in a skort."

Roy moved to stand behind Ed, poured the antiseptic onto a cotton pad and started to gingerly clean the wounds. Ed hissed out loudly between his teeth and jerked away, but then he bit down and forced himself to be still. "Anyone I know?"

Silence. Not the furious, almost electric silence that Roy had missed so much, but a quiet, heavy silence. "How did you lose your eye, Mustang?" Asked softly, and Roy knew that Ed actually cared about the answer.

"Archer."

"And Bradley?"

"I destroyed him." Roy set down the antiseptic, picked up the ointment. He carefully applied the pungent concoction to the wounds and waited.

"…. Envy." Ed practically spat the name.

Envy. A homunculus. It explained the hand-shaped bruise. "Just tell me- the homunculi and their Master. Did you defeat them?"

"I'd already killed Greed before… before Lior." Ed hesitated, then, "Al and I killed Sloth." There was guilt there, shame and more pain, but it wasn't the time to press, and if the deeply private undertone to it meant anything, it wasn't Roy's place. "Lust was destroyed. Wrath… I sent him up with Rose. Probably not the best of ideas. He didn't cause trouble for anyone, did he?" Ed didn't wait for an answer. "Envy-" Ed stopped short here. He took another deep breath. "Envy is dead."

"That leaves… one more, correct? The one who can eat anything. And their master. What of them?"

"Gluttony and Dante." Ed shrugged. "I don't know." He gave Roy a crooked grin. "I died. When I woke up it was just Rose and I. She was blinded by the transmutation, didn't see where they went. You'd have to ask Al."

"You were dead," Roy repeated flatly.

"Yeah. Al… brought me back. Didn't he… tell you?"

"_-he died. He died. I saw it. Envy killed him. And-"_

"_Al."_

"_-I tried to bring him back. I failed, I must have failed, but I don't____ remember__, and even if I did he'd still be dead!"_

"He doesn't remember."

"Doesn't remember?"

_So it wasn't intentional after all. _"Alphonse… When Alphonse was found, he had no memories beyond the night the two of you tried to transmute your mother."

At first, Ed went very still. "He-" He took a deep breath, released it slowly. "So a price was paid after all." Ed put his face in his hand. "He's alright, right? I mean- whole, hale, fully functioning?"

"Yes."

"So…" Roy didn't get to here what the 'so' was for, but he could see the speed with which Ed was thinking, considering and discarding ideas. He came to a conclusion quickly. "I doubt he'll ever get them back."

"A little over a year ago, he started having dreams about your journey. Not memories, just vague, disjointed images and emotions, all tangled together. He stopped having them after he dreamed about- about how you died."

Ed smiled, looked over his shoulder to focus tired eyes on Roy. "You two are close." It is not a question.

"Yes."

Ed looked away again, and after a moment said, "I'm glad."

Nothing more was said while Roy finished bandaging Ed's wounds. When he was done he put everything away, picked up the discarded t-shirt and handed it to Ed. He helped Ed tug the shirt over his head with no fear of Edward getting angry at being treated as if he could not do it himself. It was obvious that Edward didn't have the energy to get worked up about anything.

"Go to sleep, Edward. We'll talk in the morning."

"It is morning."

Roy glanced at the pale light filling the hall. "So it is." He hauled Ed to his feet. "We'll talk in the afternoon, then."

"Alright." Ed then surprised Roy by leaning forward and hugging him, one armed and awkward. "Missed you, bastard," he said roughly.

Roy returned the embrace carefully at first, but then he gave in to the desperate feeling that had been in his chest since he answered the phone and he crushed the smaller man against him. Ed stiffened for a fraction of a second before closing his eyes and resting his head against Roy's shoulder, his hand splaying against his back. There were too many words tumbling through Roy's head, too many things he wanted to say but didn't know _how_, and he finally choked out, "Don't you leave again."

Ed smiled against his shoulder. "Wasn't planning on it."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Notes: **"/This/" means they are speaking in 'Cretan'.

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

Awareness came slowly. He had to claw his way up past exhaustion and grief before he could crack his eyes open and look around the room in bleary confusion. White walls. Dark carved-wood furniture. Heavy navy drapes pulled tightly shut so only the smallest amount of light filtered in. Not another dingy hotel. Not another abandoned farmhouse. There was a moment of blissful ignorance, of confusion, before the events of the other night came back to him- _The Gate was there, a thousand greedy hands reached out towards them. Anya trembled in his arms and he held her tighter, whispered soothingly into her ear. They were going to die. Maybe, maybe that wouldn't be so bad, after_- he pulled his pillow over his head, tried to push them away- _Someone shoved him, hard, and he stumbled into the center of the circle. He turned, expecting Envy- God, did the fucker never die? -but it was Esta, her face streaked with blood and dirt. She was smiling at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. He called her name, reached out for her with the arm not holding Anya. She shook her head. "It's alright, Edward. You want to see your brother again, don't you?"- _but they just kept coming.

"Esta." he said, pressing his face into the sheets and clenching his eyes shut against the tears but he couldn't block out the memory of his wife- _blood running down her wrists, eyes closed, head titled back as she smiled- the small, unearthly smile that always made Ed think she knew more than she should_- as the Gate took her.

"/Papa?/" Anya asked. She tugged on the pillow, and Edward let her take it away. He rolled over and hauled her up against his side, wrapped his arm around her and hugged her close.

"/Yeah?/" he asked.

"/Where are we?/" she asked, small hands hooking into the front of his shirt. A habit she'd had since she was an infant, but at least she no longer dragged his shirt up to her mouth to suck on it.

"/We're… at General Mustang's. In Central./"

"/Who's General Mustang?/"

"/A friend./"

Anya nodded, then took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. "/I want Mama and Grandpa./"

Ed hugged her tighter. "/I know./" He rested his cheek on the top of her head and his tears soaked into her hair. "/I know, baby./"

Neither of them said anything more, and after a few minutes Anya drifted back to sleep. Ed didn't even try, just lay there staring out the window. He wondered at the fact that the world that lay beyond it was the home that he had fought tooth and nail to return to for years of his life, but now that he was actually there, it was his home in the other world that he craved.

"_It's alright, Edward." _But it wasn't. It _wasn't_.

Ed pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead and bit down on the sobs trying to tear their way out of his throat. He distantly wondered what had happened to his almost-calm from the night before, and decided it had probably been due to shock, and now the shock had worn off and left him to deal with his grief unaided.

_So silly. _The memory of his wife's voice whispered, and he remembered the way that her eyes would soften and her lips quirk up. She would run her hands through his hair and bring their faces close together. _Edward… _Searching for the right words but she did not know them in his language and he did not know them in hers. _I love you. _She would say instead. _I love you. _The words had kept him going even when he had no hope left.

Ed drifted asleep with that memory firmly in mind and hoped it would keep his nightmares away.

When he woke again, it was to someone shaking his shoulder gently. He didn't want to open his eyes at first, already feeling the hollow pit in his stomach that waited for him. The one that he would feel every morning for months or years to come that said something vital and irreplaceable in his life was gone and nothing would ever be quite the same.

"Edward." Roy said softly.

Ed opened his eyes. The older man was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over him slightly.

Roy's hair was rumpled and he was wearing a grey t-shirt and blue sleep pants. Ed had never seen the man so casual. It was new and strange and combined with the fond look on the older man's face, very comforting.

"Colonel- General." Ed's lips twisted for a second. The titles didn't feel right for the man with eyes that were still sleep heavy and whose fingers were carding through Ed's hair. "Roy." He finally settled on. It felt a little strange, but not as much as he expected it to.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like shit." Ed said honestly.

Roy kept stroking his hair, dark eye worried, uncertain, and behind that still slightly stunned by Ed's presence.

Well, Ed figured with how long he had been gone, he really couldn't blame him.

"How about you?"

Roy returned honesty with honesty. "I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that you're back. And you have a child." His hand left Ed's hair to slide across his chin. "And you need to shave."

"Hey-"

"You're all grown up, Edward." Roy said. The concern in his eye had been replaced by wonder, wistfulness, and if Ed was not mistaken, a little bit of pride.

"Yeah, well-"

"Of course, _up_ probably isn't the most precise word-"

"Fuck you, bastard!" But he couldn't work up an ounce of irritation, because he had missed this, too. Colonel Sarcasm and his endless short jokes. "I grew, damn it." he insisted. He _had_.

Roy's hand found its way back to Ed's hair, and the man smiled. _Smiled._ "That you did."

* * *

"You burnt the toast."

Roy almost jumped. He looked up at Ed, who was standing in the doorway, shaved and showered, his hair pulled back into a sloppy knot and his daughter, also showered and dressed in a simple brown dress, perched on his hip.

Roy looked down at the blackened slices of toast. "So I have."

"Hawkeye was telling the truth. You_ do_ burn everything."

"Major Hawkeye is just jealous of my amazing culinary abilities."

"I can see that." Ed said dryly. He set Anya down with a few murmured words and a gentle shove towards the table, then made his way over to Roy. He had a slight limp, but it was due to the prosthetic leg, not any injury. Ed took the burnt pile of toast. "Sit down, Mustang. I'll fix us something to eat."

"Do _you _know how to cook?"

"I can't be much worse than you, can I?"

Roy had to concede the point, and when Ed pointed, he grabbed his coffee and took a seat at his table next to Anya, who blinked at him with sleepy golden eyes.

"Good morning." he told her.

She smiled at him shyly. "Good Morning, Mr. Mustang."

Clean, with her hair brushed and the hint of a blush on her cheeks, she was easily the prettiest little girl he had ever seen. Of course, any child of Edward's was bound to be good looking, but Roy had a feeling that she had inherited the best of both her parents. He returned her smile.

"Mustang, when was the last time you went grocery shopping?" Ed asked. He pulled a carton of eggs out of Roy's fridge, squinted at them.

"About three weeks ago. But anything in the fridge is what's left of what Al bought last weekend, except for the milk and soup, which I bought yesterday."

Ed looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then he shook his head and went back to digging through the fridge. Silence descended on the kitchen, and Roy cast around for something to talk about.

"So… what happened to your automail?"

Ed started to pull things out of the fridge and set them on the counter. "It was trashed before I even met up with you and Hawkeye. Not that it mattered. Pans?"

"Cupboard to the left of the oven. Why didn't it matter?" Roy watched him move about the kitchen, impressed by how comfortable he seemed cooking, and more than that, by how he seemed to be at ease in the new, unfamiliar environment, finding the tools he needed and going about his business with a casual confidence that the younger Edward he had known never could have managed.

Ed pulled out a sauté pan, looked around until he found a good-sized glass bowl. "The place where I ended up didn't have the technology to fix it, and even if they had, I hit a growth spurt soon after arriving, would have outgrown it within six months, and there was no way in hell I could have afforded to get it replaced." He shrugged, deftly cracked a dozen eggs into the bowl. "For a few months, I was back to being a cripple, but Dad and I worked together to make the prosthetics I'm using now. Not as effective or comfortable as the automail, but a hell of a lot better that the useless pieces of wood that were my other option." Ed's shoulders hunched. "Winry's going to kill me."

"I'm sure Ms. Rockbell will understand."

Ed chopped up the green and red peppers he had managed to unearth, diced two cloves of garlic and half of an onion. "Yeah. Right. If understanding involves homicide with a wrench." Despite his words, his expression was fond, nostalgic. "You wouldn't happen to know what she'd been up to, would you?"

"According to Alphonse, Ms. Rockbell spent some time studying under a man named Dominic in Rush Valley. She returned to Resembool about three years ago, and has been working there since. They get a lot of business. They supplied the Fullmetal Alchemist with his 'invincible' automail after all, and are now quite famous."

Ed snorted, set the pan on the burner. "Invincible." He looked through Roy's cupboards, frowning. "You have no olive oil." he said. He gave Roy a glare that suggested he thought Roy had neglected to purchase it just to spite him. "You better have butter." Roy did, and Ed put butter and a dash of salt in the pan, lit the burner, then went to work grating cheese.

Roy had to admit that even though he was making something as simple as an omelet, he seemed to know what he was doing. Roy turned his attention to Anya, and found that the girl was studying him closely.

She smiled at him again when their eyes met. "Is you from Japan?" she asked.

"Are you from Japan." Ed corrected.

Roy shook his head. "No. I was born here in Amestris."

Anya mulled this over. "No talk Japanese?"

Roy shook his head again.

Anya looked disappointed. "I talk little Japanese." She shrugged, the gesture endearingly like her father's. "My English not good much."

"Monster." Ed pointed at the fridge, wiggled his fingers in a 'gimme' gesture. Anya hopped out of her seat and went over to the fridge, pulled out the carton of milk and poured the amount Ed directed into the eggs. He dragged over a chair, handed her a fork and gave her the task of stirring them.

"So where _were _you, Edward?" Roy asked.

Ed sighed. "It's a very long story." He looked pointedly at Anya, changed the subject with, "So, am I AWOL, still to be taken in with any force necessary, or deceased?"

"Deceased. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric, buried with full honors."

Ed digested this, didn't look surprised. "Well, we all knew that dying was the only way I'd ever get a promotion." A pause, then a darkly curious, "So, how did I die?"

"Depends on who you ask." The theories on what had finally felled the Fullmetal Alchemist were many and varied, ranging from a pack of chimeras getting the best of him to the military silencing him.

"What was the official line?"

"That you disappeared in the chaos at the end of Lior, and are presumed dead." Roy stared into his empty coffee cup, remembered the newspaper article sitting on his desk, the fierce eyed picture of Edward that had almost been witness to the end of his life. "We all… except for Alphonse, we all thought you were dead. Alphonse searched for you, when I was forced to stop. He came to me, wanting to take the exam and get his Certification, but I wouldn't let him. For almost five years, he trained with your old teacher, traveled all over the country, followed every rumor, every story. Any whisper of your name. And there were many, because people need hope, need a hero, and they didn't want to believe you were dead. Five years. Two months ago, he finally gave up hope. And now here you are."

There was a clatter as Ed set the bowl down too hard. "/What/-What? Wait. Repeat that last bit."

"Alphonse-"

"No. No- five years? It's been five years? _Five?_"

"Yes, five years, Edward what-"

"Mustang, that's-" Ed stopped, looked down at Anya, who was looking up at him in surprise but not alarm, small white teeth chewing on her bottom lip. Ed's head then snapped up towards the window, where outside the sun was shining, the sky a brilliant summer blue.

"Papa?"

Ed shook his head. "That's not… it's…I was-"

"Edward, what is it?"

Ed looked back at him, _looked_ at him, eyes roving over Roy with the sort of focused intensity that Ed reserved for unfamiliar arrays and the most fascinating passages in his books. "Mustang… how old are you?"

Well- that wasn't what he had expected. "Thirty-four."

Ed looked to the window, to Roy, the window again, down to his daughter. He finally looked back up at Roy and shook his head. "Mustang… I'm twenty-six years old. Anya is six. I've been gone for _ten _years."

Now it was Roy's turn to look, to study Edward. This man-who-was-no-longer-a-boy, with his too old eyes that Roy could never remember really being young. Five extra years didn't seem like much- _wasn't possible, why did Edward's involvement never fail to turn the world on its ear?_ -but with the madcap pace at which Ed flew through life, five years was more like twenty. "How is that possible?"

There was a long silence as Ed thought this over. "The Gate must not be bound by time…or…" Whatever the 'or' was obviously didn't bear thinking about, if the way Roy could see Ed brutally snap off that train of thought meant anything. "No. The Gate…"

The Gate. Roy could hear the capital letter. "The… Gate?" he asked.

"_I… I remember touching the circle, feeling the array activate- and then I was standing somewhere, surrounded by white light and there was a Gate behind us."_

"That's where I've been. On the other side of the Gate."

"I thought the Gate was death?"

Ed's eyes went haunted. "The Gate." he stopped. "The Gate connects our world to another. I've been living in that world. Unable to get home. For over ten years."

"Papa." Anya tugged on his sleeve, pointed towards the stove.

Ed blinked, shook his head. He turned the stove off, stared off into space for a moment, then started pulling down plates. He divided up the omelet into three equal pieces, poured himself a cup of coffee and Anya a glass of milk, which Anya scowled at, obviously sharing her father's aversion to dairy products. He balanced the three plates in an easy, distracted way and slid them onto the table. "Forks?" he asked.

Roy pointed to the proper drawer. Ed snatched up Roy's coffee cup, refilled it and raised an eyebrow at the mismatched silverware in Roy's drawers.

Ed sat down across from Roy, twirled his fork around his fingers, face thoughtful. "So, that makes Al… twenty?"

"Fifteen, actually." At Ed's blank look he said, "How about I start at the beginning?"

* * *

"What are your plans now?"

Ed shrugged. He handed Roy the last of the dishes for drying, flicked a glance towards where Anya sat at the kitchen table looking at the newspaper, scowling down at the comics as if she could puzzle out the half-foreign language by willpower alone. "We'll head to Resembool."

"And then?"

Ed grinned at him. "Come on, General. You know I never think that far ahead." He looked down at the bruises ringing his wrist. Tried very, very hard not to remember- _"Come on, pipsqueak. Scream." Envy's lips against the shell of his ear. "I'll make you scream by the time this is over."_-he clenched his fist.

Roy placed a hand on his shoulder and oddly enough, it was comforting. In fact, just being near Mustang was comforting. Too comforting. It made him want to just dump all his confusion, all the horror in Mustang's lap and ask the older man to sort it all out for him. The words were there, the memories like bile in the back of his throat.

And he swallowed them down, because the one thing he wasn't was stupid and he knew that if he looked back now he wouldn't be able to go forward again.

"I should probably try to call Winry."

* * *

They tracked her down right there in Central, visiting Gracia and Elysia.

Having already agreed that it would be best that as few people knew of Ed's return as possible, it was Roy who made the calls and then invited Winry over, telling her he'd found a little something she might be interested in. ("Who the bloody hell are you calling _little_, you bastard?" Ed hissed in the background, thumping a metal hand against Roy's shoulder.) Winry was hesitant and suspicious but game, and said she would be by later.

* * *

They had always loved each other. She had always been there for him, waiting impatiently, not understanding why he couldn't come home but welcoming him with open arms anyway. She had always been there for him since he hadn't wanted her with him, hadn't wanted her to see the side of him that raged and fought and killed, hadn't wanted her to be near anything dangerous, had wanted her at home, _safe_. He hadn't wanted to share his burden with her because it was his sin and his alone to bear.

For a while, their love had been something else. They had been attracted to each other and the clashing of two passionate, violent personalities combined with teenage hormones had once ended up with them laying in a sweaty tangle on Winry's bed. Ed had known that it was only sex, that at the core their relationship hadn't changed, that he wouldn't let it. He wouldn't leave her like his father left his mother. He wouldn't let her wait when he knew that he probably wasn't going to return. Because as much as he loved her he'd loved Al more and he'd known that. They both had.

He had met her Other while on the other side. Soft spoken and shy, an aristocrat's daughter in fine dresses and wide brimmed hats. She'd been nothing like his Winry, but as he'd watched her grow, he had imagined the woman his friend had become.

He looked at the woman standing before him and decided that his imagination hadn't done her justice.

"Ed?" She asked.

Ed smiled at her. "Yeah."

She dropped her suitcase with a clatter, took three shaking steps and reached up with a trembling hand to touch his face. Slightly calloused fingertips brushed over the ridge of his cheekbone, down his jaw, his neck, the belt that held his prosthetic in place and finally the cold edge of the false arm. There were tears welling in her eyes. "You grew." she said, then she was against his chest, her arms around his waist and she was sobbing.

Ed gently wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek on the top of her head. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her, felt something in his chest loosen, some of the grief ease. "I'm sorry." He whispered.

"Stupid." Winry choked out. "Stupid. What were you thinking, going and dying like that?" Her hands fisted into the back of his shirt. "Stupid."

Ed smiled and held her tighter. "Yeah. It hurt like a bitch too."

Winry laughed through her tears. "Good. Don't do it again."

* * *

When Winry was done inspecting the automail ports and examining Ed's prosthetics ("You and your dad made these?" she sounded impressed.), Ed took her hand, led her upstairs.

"There's someone you have to meet." Down the hall to the guest bedroom, where he had put Anya for her afternoon nap.

When Winry saw the girl, she blinked. "Ed, who-"

"My daughter, Anya." Ed said. He kissed the little girl's forehead. "Isn't she beautiful?"

Winry gaped for a moment, then reached out and hesitantly brushed her fingers through the girl's bangs. "She is." She pulled her hand back. "How…?"

Ed have her a short explanation. He had been in another world with no way home. It had been ten years for him, not five. His wife had died in the events that brought him home. It was the first time he had said those words aloud. He repeated them. "Esta died. She's gone." His throat closed up about there, and he stopped.

Winry put her arm around his waist, her head on his shoulder. She remembered all the times people had come up to her after they heard about Ed's death. "I know what you're going through." they'd say. Or, "It will be alright." She remembered the impotent rage, the sharp pain every time Ed was mentioned.

There was nothing to say except, "I'm sorry." And, "I love you." They'd never said it, but Winry was old enough now to know that sometimes they needed to.

Ed rested his cheek on the top of her head. "I missed you."

After a moment, Winry pointed out, "She has your scowl."

Ed just grinned.

* * *

After dinner, Roy offered Winry the other guest room. She smiled politely and thanked him. While Winry was in the shower and Anya already fast asleep, Ed sat on the edge of Roy's bed while the older man checked his bandages.

"Are you leaving tomorrow?" Roy asked when he was finished.

Ed nodded. "Seems like." Winry had to be back to Resembool in three days, and it took over two by train to get there. He caught Roy's hand just as Roy pulled it away. He smiled at him. "Thank you. For everything."

Roy smiled back. "It was the least I could do."

Ed stood but did not release Roy's hand. "I'd been afraid you were dead, you know. I'd been afraid that Bradley had killed you, or that you'd killed him and then ended up before a firing squad, or , well, you and I both know how many ways there are to die." He stroked his thumb over Roy's knuckles, the distracted gesture strangely intimate. "I'd been so afraid that I'd come back and you wouldn't be here, that I'd never get a chance to say that." Ed leaned forward, pressed his forehead against Roy's shoulder, and closed his eyes.

Roy reached up and hesitantly stroked Ed's hair. "Are you sure you're the real Edward, because the tone in your voice just now sounded suspiciously like fondness."

Ed laughed. "Maybe that blow to the head was harder than I thought."

"Only a homunculus could possibly hit you hard enough to actually damage that thick skull of yours."

"Fuck you, bastard." Ed said, definite fondness in his voice.

Roy smiled again, couldn't help it. "Ah. That's better."

* * *

Roy drove them to the station early the next morning.

"Thanks." Ed said. He shifted, jostled Anya up further on his hip.

Roy shook his head. "It was nothing. I'm just glad that you're back."

Anya tugged sleepily at Roy's sleeve, and when he bent down, she placed a careful kiss on his cheek. "Bye Mr. Mustang."

Ed smiled at him, the expression tired and more than a little shaky. "Later." He said. Not goodbye, because he fully intended to come back.

* * *

It was a testament to how long it had been that his brother did not immediately recognize him. The boy- so young, so young and it made Ed feel so _old_ -stared at him blankly for a minute. Then shock and confusion gave way to recognition and joy and they were holding each other as close as they were able. Four years of blood and death and pain and three years of hopeless searching were suddenly worth it, and he'd do it all over again and again as long as it brought him to this moment, to his brother flesh and blood and real.

"You're home. You're back." Alphonse sobbed against the front of his shirt.

"Yeah. I'm home." And he was.

Roy was safety and warmth and Winry was family and hope but Alphonse was completion.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

* * *

"_Another world?" Esta asked, not incredulous but thoughtful. She leaned forward, excited, and the movement caused the dark waves of her hair to fall over her shoulder. "This world- this is where you and your father come from, is it not? Where this 'Resembool' and 'Central' are, yes?"_

_Ed nodded and smiled, relieved. She believed him. He had been afraid that she'd think him crazy. "Yes."_

"_Is your world much different from ours?" She asked._

"_No. I thought it was, when I first arrived, but the longer I live here, the more I realize that all worlds are the same. There's even the same people- only they're not the same people. They look the same, and sometimes their names are the same, but they don't always act the same. They're… not the people I knew."_

_Esta tilted her head, watching him, and her eyes were suddenly very sad. "It must be painful to meet these people."_

"_It…it is. It was worse at first, you know, when I almost expected them to recognize me. I've gotten used to it."_

"_You run into these people often?" _

"_It would seem." Ed said bitterly. It was like they were drawn to him- or him to them. _

"_Sister is one of them, isn't she? And brother." Dark eyes stared at him, not needing an answer because she could see it there on his face. "Alfons and your baby brother's name. It is no coincidence, is it?" She reached out and took his hands- both of them, flesh and steel without flinching. "It hurts, doesn't it?" When Ed nodded, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his cheek. "Don't worry, Edward. You'll find your way home eventually." _

"_There's no way back." He protested. _

_She just smiled. "Then go forward."_

* * *

It was a week after he got to Resembool that he went through Esta's bag. He had been surprised to find a leather folder filled with all of their photos, some of his own journals, and his father's favorite coat under Esta's things.

Not too surprised, though.

He lifted his father's coat to his face and inhaled the scent of the familiar cologne. The memories were so sharp- Sitting under his father's desk as a child, the smooth wood of the blocks and the occasional heavy weight of his father's hand on his shoulder. The rough brush of a beard as his father kissed him goodbye, the feeling of foreboding, of somehow knowing that his father was not coming back. The rage that made his vision go red as he saw his father sitting with Maria Ross, flirting with her while his mother was rotting away and he'd _let her die_, hadn't come back and more importantly, he hadn't been there to stop them from trying to bring her back. His father standing before him and telling him why he had left, showing Edward the rotting flesh of his arm, and it wasn't the decay that made Edward's stomach turn, but instead the shame and the pain in his father's eyes and the understanding that was trying to creep into his heart. His father sitting across from him in their study, the light glinting off his glasses and hair and the deep rumble of his voice comforting in a way Ed had never wanted it to be. His father walking with Anya on his shoulders, both of them laughing as Anya used her new height to try and pluck the apple blossoms out of the tree. His father holding him the one night that he broke down, when it finally hit him that he was never going to see Al or Winry or the Colonel ever again.

He had never expected to find his father again, and while it hurt to have lost him, Ed had known it was inevitable, and he was glad that he'd had him again in the end.

When he set down the coat and looked back into the bag, he saw what had been buried beneath it.

Esta's favorite scarf and wrapped inside it a well-used pocketknife and Esta's wedding ring.

_You knew. You knew the whole time what he was going to do and what you were going to do to stop it. _

He remembered Esta laughing as she detangled Anya's fingers from his hair, scowling and cuffing him across the ear when he and Marc had come home stumbling drunk, grinning as she lead him across the floor of the bar after closing time, trying to teach him to dance. ("Come on, Ed. If you can fight with metal limbs you can dance with them.")

_You knew._

"Brother?" Al asked, taking a cautious step into the room.

Ed looked up at Alphonse, teenage and gangly with grease from helping Winry smudged on his cheek.

"_You wanted to see your brother again, didn't you?"_

His breath hitched on a sob, and Al was there, wrapping flesh and blood arms around him and holding him while he wept.

_I wanted you to see him too._

_

* * *

_

_This is what I fought for. _Ed watched Al, Anya and Rose's son race ahead of him, Den at their heels. Winry, Rose and Pinako waited for them on the front porch, welcoming them home.

It wasn't perfect.

He and Alphonse had always been close, but a night of shared sin and desperate decisions written in blood had tied them together in a way that made them closer than just brothers. Four years of despair and guilt, regret and hope, frustration and determination had made them closer still. Now for Alphonse those years were gone. All he had from that time were a few vivid dreams. Alphonse had grown up without him. The Alphonse that ran ahead of him now was not the Alphonse that he remembered.

Edward had changed too. The last time that Al had seen his brother had been as a mischievous, determined, headstrong little boy. Ed had returned a world-weary man with blood on his hands and horror after horror carved into his soul.

There was a gap of fifteen years between them where there should only have been one.

"We don't really know each other anymore, do we?" Al had asked a little over a month after his return.

"No. I guess we don't."

Al had looked sad, then determined. "Then we'll have to fix that, won't we?"

They might not have known each other all that well anymore, but they had time to learn. They were still brothers, and they still loved each other.

It was enough.

Still, Edward found himself growing restless. He had spent a year mourning and resting- healing, and though the wound still ached, it was a distant ache that he was almost used to. They needed to start moving forward- it was what Esta and his father had wanted -and he knew just where he wanted to go.

* * *

It had been a long, dull morning. The kind of morning that had Fuery volunteering to run errands for Hawkeye, just to escape the stifling boredom of the office. He was headed downstairs to pick up some documents from Sheska. As he reached the ground floor, he passed a man talking with a young soldier. It was the man's hair that caught Fuery's eye. A long, gold ponytail that fell to the man's lower back.

"… the third floor." the guard was saying.

"Thank you." the man's voice had a slight accent that Fuery couldn't place for sure, but he thought might be Cretan.

Fuery caught only a glimpse of the man's face- sharp angles, golden skin and golden eyes -before he passed him.

It took a full five minutes for it to hit him.

* * *

"Eh. What's taking Fuery so long?" Havoc asked, glaring up at the ceiling and rolling his sucker around in his mouth.

Breda sighed. "He's only been gone ten minutes." He smirked. "I'm just glad Hawkeye didn't send Falman here, or we'd have to wait ages."

Both men snickered as Falman gave an annoyed huff and then proceeded to pretend he couldn't hear them.

Havoc sighed and leaned back in his seat. "We haven't had any real work in weeks. I'm bored."

"Yeah." Breda agreed.

"You know, this was always the point where the door banged open and the boss stomped in, seething with righteous fury and plotting the General's death." Havoc said, somewhat sadly.

As if on cue, the door opened. A young man in black slacks and a crisp white shirt walked in. Gold eyes surveyed the office with veiled amusement.

He grinned. "The bastard in his office?" Without waiting for an answer, he strode over to Mustang's door and rapped sharply twice with a metal fist before letting himself in.

The door shut behind him with an audible click.

Havoc, Breda and Falman looked at the door, then each other. Before any of them could say anything, Fuery burst into the room, panting like he'd just run laps around the building. When he had enough breath to speak, he burst out with "I just saw Edward Elric!"

They all mutely pointed to the door.

* * *

Roy did not look up at the knock on his door, instead continued rifling through the stack of papers on his desk. He was sure he had seen the other half of the report not half an hour earlier. Hawkeye was going to kill him. It was the third copy that she had given him. It was like the damn thing just didn't want to be signed. The door opened and he looked up and forgot all about the report.

"Edward."

The younger man grinned at him. "I do believe that this is the first time I've actually seen you working."

Roy felt a smile tugging at his lips. "I see that you're feeling better. What brings you here?"

Ed walked across the office, did a brief turn to check out Roy's new space, whistled appreciatively. He sat down in the chair in front of Roy's desk. "I want my watch back."

Roy raised an eyebrow. "Straight to the point, as always. I thought you hated being a dog of the military?"

Ed shrugged. "I did. I do. But it pays well enough." Ed tilted his head to the side in thought. "And it allows me to bill my travel and research expenses to the State."

"It won't be easy. They will want to know where you've been. And if you do get your watch back, you will once again be under the military's control." Roy reminded him. "Subject to the military's orders."

"I will be under _your _control and subject to _your_ orders." Ed said. He leaned back in the chair and linked his hands behind his head. "I did my research while I was in Resembool. The country isn't in the greatest of shape, is it? The sudden transition from wartime to peacetime didn't exactly work wonders for our economy. The recession caused by the end of wartime production, along with an influx of labor from returning troops has caused high unemployment. Factories will eventually retool and adapt to producing consumer goods, but until then there's a lot of grumbling, isn't there? In rural farming and mining towns, the military is less popular than ever, especially to the west where tension with Creta is so high. Rumors of the truth about Ishbal abound …"

Roy found himself pleasantly surprised as he listened to Edward. The young man had learned all that he could about the country's situation while he was healing. Roy's eyebrows wanted to rise as he listened and found out that Edward had not only scoped out the situation in Amestris but in the neighboring countries too. He didn't need to ask how Edward had managed to get the opinion of a frustrated deserter of the Cretan army. Ed had a knack for getting people to relax around him when he wanted. There was just something honest about the boy, even when he was lying through his teeth. A genuine desire to help people that showed through.

"…so," Ed shrugged again, but this time it was accompanied with another grin. "I don't think that it will be too hard for me to get my watch back. In fact, I think that they'll be quite eager to see to it that I agree to come back willingly. I am the People's Alchemist, after all."

Roy raised an eyebrow. "So you think that the State will not only let you off without any punishment, but cater to your demands?"

"Of course. They need me." Edward said. It was true. Having the Fullmetal Alchemist back would ease some of the mounting tension. Especially in areas like Yousewell and the towns that were nearest to the western and northern borders, where anti-military sentiment was so high it bordered on open hostility. The State alchemists that were sent to those areas were not trusted, and the people would not cooperate with them like they had with Edward. For once Roy needed Edward to stop an explosion instead of cause one.

"Do you think that their need alone will be enough?" Roy asked.

"Most likely. And if not, I have you on my side, and you're the most manipulative bastard I know." This was said with a mock sneer that almost masked the genuine affection in his voice.

It was suddenly hard to keep from smiling, opposed to just earlier that morning where it was hard to keep his smile fixed in place convincingly. "We'll have to decide where you've been, and we'll need to explain Anya. Where is she, by the way?"

"In Resembool. I didn't want to chance bringing her with me. Once I've cleared everything up and got a place to live, they'll bring her up here."

"You seem quite confident that things are going to work out."

"Of course. Like I said, I have you."

* * *

Hawkeye walked into the office to see Fuery, Havoc, Breda and even Falman with their ears pressed to the General's door.

She cleared her throat. There was no effect. She tried again. She finally resorted to taking the safety off her gun. Still no reaction.

"Gentlemen." She said.

Havoc turned. "Shhh. We're trying to hear what the boss and the General are discussing."

Hawkeye was pretty sure that statement should have made sense. "What?"

"Edward walked in there about twenty minutes ago." Falman supplied.

Fuery shivered. "Or at least we think it was Edward. It could have been that shape shifting homunculus."

"I doubt it." Havoc said. "They sound like they're just talking. There's been no shouting and no movement since the boss sat down. I just wish they were talking loud enough so we could hear…"

They all seemed to think about this for a minute. Edward Elric and Roy Mustang in the same room for twenty minutes with no outbursts from either party.

"Definitely a homunculus." Breda said.

Hawkeye sighed. She calmly shoved them aside and knocked on the door.

* * *

They looked up at the knock on the door.

Edward was halfway out of his seat when the door opened and Hawkeye stepped in. Her eyes went from Ed to Roy to Ed again, where they widened and her mouth parted into a surprised 'o'. Ed smiled at her, stood. "Major Hawkeye." He said. "It's good to see you again."

"Edward!" Hawkeye said, all military decorum disappearing as she rushed forward and hugged the boy happily. Ed laughed and hugged her back. Behind her Havoc leaned against the doorframe and smiled while Fuery, Breda and even Falman boggled (as much as Falman ever boggled). When she stepped back, she saw she was eye to eye with someone who was not a boy at all. She straightened her uniform and tried for stern disapproval. "That was rude, Edward. Shocking everyone like that."

"But you only get to come back from the dead so many times. If I'd stopped to say hello I would have missed out on the flabbergasted faces." He grinned at the others over Hawkeye's shoulder.

"True." She said, her lips twitching. She turned to the General. "I take it we have work to do?"

Behind her Breda muttered, "Finally."

* * *

A month later found Edward sitting in his newly purchased and furnished house. It was a bit large for just his daughter and himself- it was three floors when including the basement and had four bedrooms- but it was fairly close to both the library and Headquarters, which was all that really mattered as far as Ed was concerned.

"Wish the kitchen was bigger."

"You could always use mine, Edward." Riza said.

Ed snorted. "You just want to rope me into cooking for you."

"Of course." Riza said. She was relaxed and out of uniform, a sight that Ed was getting used to. He had stayed with her while they cleared everything up, and an easy friendship had sprouted up between them.

"Well, at least you're honest." They were sitting in the living room eating Xingian takeout, tired after a day of shopping for all the little household necessities ranging from toasters to towels. "Thanks for helping me, by the way."

"You're welcome." She said. "I think Havoc's getting worried though. Thinks you're trying to steal me away."

Ed smirked. "I know."

"It's so strange to think that you're old enough that his suspicions are reasonable." She stabbed distractedly at her noodles. At first, when Edward had given his explanation she hadn't thought of his extra years. Fuery had been excited, because it meant that Edward was the same age as him now, Havoc had said it explained his new height, Falman had asked Ed what the exact difference in time was, and Breda had completely ignored the detail in favor of trying to wrap his mind around the idea of Ed having a kid. Considering the way he had been looking at Ed earlier when he'd said he wasn't going to be in the next day because he was going to pick up Anya and get her settled, it would seem he was still trying.

It was four days later that Riza had felt the difference those extra years made.

They had been in the kitchen fixing dinner and he had asked her about her relationship with First Lieutenant Havoc. She'd been startled, because she and Havoc were very discreet and hadn't told anyone that they were involved. The General knew, but she had been sure that was all. She had asked him who told him.

"I have eyes you know." He'd said, snatching an onion from her suddenly frozen fingers. "Is it serious?"

She had considered not answering him, changing the subject to something less personal. Riza was not in the habit of sharing the details of her personal life. She hadn't had a friend to confide in since she headed to Ishbal. Her stern, no nonsense attitude and devotion to Mustang played no small part in it. There was Havoc, of course, but he was her lover. There was Fuery, Breda and Falman but she as much as she cared for them, they weren't really close. They were all bound together by a loyalty to Roy and the events of five years ago. There was really no one else. She was not sure how to approach others and no one had tried to approach her in a long time.

Until Edward.

"I don't know." She'd found herself admitting.

"Hm." Ed had tipped the carefully chopped onions into the pan. "How long have you been seeing each other?"

"Two years."

His eyebrows rose. "Sounds serious to me."

Then she had found herself talking as she hadn't since she was in academy. She had told him about how she and Havoc had started dating a couple years after her relationship with Roy had ended. That at first they had both thought it would be just a fling, that they'd never really made it official. She admitted that she wasn't sure what Havoc's thoughts on the matter were, as they never really discussed their relationship.

Ed had laughed at that one. "That man is head over heels in love with you."

"Oh. He is?" Riza had asked, a faint tremor in her voice that caused Ed to look up from his taste testing to glance at her. He blinked and fought down the urge to rub his eyes in disbelief. Riza Hawkeye was blushing.

Deciding to act as if he hadn't noticed, he nodded. "Definitely."

The next day Edward had come down to the kitchen to find Riza already up and making breakfast. "What is _that_?" he asked.

"That," Riza said, affronted, "Is an omelet." She smacked Ed with the spatula. "Stop laughing!"

So Edward taught Riza how to cook.

A week later they were in the shooting range after work. "What was _that_?" Riza asked, her poker face ruined by the smirk tugging at her lips.

Ed huffed. "I hit the target, didn't I?"

"You hit _my_ target."

So Riza taught Edward how to shoot.

Once Edward had reached out, they bonded quickly. It had surprised her at first, but the more she thought about it the more it made sense. She had devoted the last fifteen years of her life to Roy Mustang and his cause. Edward had devoted almost his entire life to his little brother, and then to returning to his brother. They had both lost the person that they lived for- felt everything fall down around them because they had failed in the only thing that had ever mattered to them -and then found them again only to realize that they were not the same. Roy Mustang had lost all his ambitions. Alphonse Elric was not the brother that Edward had known. Riza and Ed were still loved, but no longer needed. Riza could not heal Roy, and Alphonse had his own life to live.

Ed and Riza were both trying to find their footing in a life- in a world -where their one driving purpose was gone.

Ed sighed. "I hope Anya likes it." He said, worried but excited at the same time.

"I'm sure she'll love it." Riza said. "Especially her room." It had been sweet to see the way Ed worried over what to buy for Anya's room. The rest of the house he'd done quickly, knowing exactly what he wanted, but for his daughter he'd went to every store in Central (or so it had felt to Riza and Gracia, trailing along behind him and trying not to look too amused) searching for something to fit the picture in his head.

"Hm." Ed tapped flesh fingers against the tabletop. "Something is missing though." He looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought. After a minute, he shrugged. "Oh well. Anya will know."

"I can't wait to meet her."

"Better tell Havoc to hide his suckers." Ed said. He grabbed another beer from the six-pack on the floor next to them.

Riza raised an eyebrow. "She has a sweet tooth?"

Ed grinned. "Yep. And she learned how to mooch from an expert."

* * *

"A garden?" Riza asked.

"A garden." Anya repeated.

"A garden!" Edward said, nodding. "I knew something wasn't right."

Havoc nudged Riza and leaned down to whisper in her ear. "Sometimes, I still think he's that shape shifting homunculus."

Riza chuckled, earning her a scowl from Ed.

When she came over the next day, there was the beginning of a garden in the back yard. Anya was working away happily in it. She sat herself next to Ed, who had wisely chosen to sit just outside of Anya's immediate dirt-throwing range. "A garden?"

Ed nodded. "Yeah. When Esta first started living with us, we were living in an apartment in Munich. She put pots of herbs on the windowsill and ivy in the living room. Said it made the place feel like a home. She told me that when she was little, she had always dreamed of living in a house with a garden out back." Ed played with the gold band on his finger. "So when we moved to London, Jal and I turned the backyard into the garden she wanted. The garden was her place, and later, her and Anya's."

"Hm." Riza watched Anya. The girl sang as she worked, sang in a language that was neither the one that Ed had called Greek or their own. It sounded an awful lot like Ishbalian.

After about half an hour Ed told Anya it was time to go inside. "You eating with us tonight?" he asked Riza.

"Yeah. Havoc's at the bar with Breda and Falman."

Ed was much easier with physical contact now, and he put his arm around Riza's shoulder. "Good. That means we have you for the whole evening."

* * *

"Papa." Anya said, soft but insistent. Ed broke off what he was saying to the sales clerk and looked down.

"What?"

"/Isn't that General Mustang?/" she asked, her eyes focused on the other side of the street.

Ed followed her gaze and nodded. "Yeah." He turned to the sales clerk and paid for his purchases.

Anya watched Roy. "/Are we done shopping?/" she asked. Ed nodded. "/Can I go talk to the General?/"

"Where are your gloves?"

Anya pulled them out of where she had tucked them into her sash and put them on.

"You can go."

She grinned and rushed down the street. "General!"

Ed shifted their purchases to his right arm and followed his daughter at a more sedate pace. By the time he reached them Anya had the General's left hand clutched in both her own and was interrogating him on how his day had went.

Mustang smiled at Ed's approach. "Fullmetal."

Ed grinned back. "Skipping out on paperwork?"

The General put on a look of mock indignation. "Of course not. I decided to give myself a day off."

"You mean Hawkeye has a doctor's appointment."

Roy shrugged. "Maybe."

Anya tugged on his hand. "Hey, if you don't have to work you should come get something to eat with us." When the General looked like he might think of some excuse she added, "Please?"

"Sure." He looked up at Ed and smirked. "I believe you owe me dinner, anyway."

Ed bit back the sarcastic retort and said instead, "I do." He flicked his bangs out of his eyes and made a mental note to take Winry's suggestion that he trim them. "Where would you suggest?"

Roy thought a moment. "I think I know just the place."

* * *

Ed knew he really wasn't supposed to have Anya tag along with him to work each day. However, as with Alphonse, it was over looked.

Anya surprised him by being so at ease around Roy's men. She had grown up in areas where anyone in a uniform was met with either distrust or outright hostility, Ed and Esta had never been easy with the military, and after- well, Ed was surprised.

He was unsurprised, however, by how much she adored Roy. The smug, smirking, too charming bastard who's control was wound so tightly Ed wondered if he even remembered how to relax, and underneath that there was something tired and lonely and aching. Roy wasn't good with children. He didn't know how to treat them, how to talk to them, how to react when Ed's daughter grabbed his hand and beamed up at him, chattering on about what she was doing with her little plot of dirt that would eventually be a garden. Ed figured Roy would learn.

Still, it paid to be cautious.

While they were walking home a few weeks after she arrived he said, "They're not the same. They might look the same, but they're not. You know that, right? Mustang is not Nakamura."

Anya scowled, looked down at her gloved hands. "I know that. I _do_." A pause. "I miss them."

Ed squeezed her hand. "Me too."

That night Ed and Anya baked muffins, at Anya's insistence, and Anya brought some with them the next morning. They arrived earlier than usual, and the office was still dark. Ed thought for a moment that they were the only ones there. While Anya settled herself in the spot she had claimed for her own- between where Havoc usually sat and where Falman sat- Ed headed for Roy's office, planning to put his report on the General's desk. When he opened the door his eyes were immediately drawn to the blue clad figure asleep on the couch. He sighed.

"Entertain yourself for a moment, monster." Ed said quietly to Anya, then closed the door behind him. After dropping his report on the desk, he bent over Roy's sleeping form and shook him awake gently. "Hey bastard." he said. "Wake up. Hey."

Roy woke almost instantly, turning his head to squint at Ed blearily. "Edward?"

"Do you do this often?"

Roy looked around, took in the sight of his office, and pushed himself up into a sitting position. "You're here early."

Ed let the change of subject pass without comment. "I have a seven year old little girl. I get up when she gets up."

"Hn." Roy grunted.

Ed reached out and straightened Roy's uniform collar without thinking about it. "Watch Anya for me and I'll go get you some coffee." he offered.

"You're being awfully nice today." Roy remarked.

Ed shrugged. "Maybe."

When he returned ten minutes later with the promised coffee, he found Roy and Anya sitting at Roy's desk looking at a small stack of photos. Roy looked up as Ed came in. He nodded towards the pictures. "She was beautiful." he said.

Ed came closer and handed Roy his coffee, then looked down at the photos. The one Roy was referring to was a picture of Ed, Esta and Alfons sitting on the church steps after Ed and Esta's wedding. Esta was wearing a simple white dress and her hair was loose over her shoulders. Esta and Alfons had their arms wrapped around Ed's waist while Ed had his arms around their shoulders. Their faces were pressed cheek to cheek and they were all smiling brightly.

Ed felt his eyes burn, but he smiled. "She was, wasn't she?" He took a muffin from the box he had grabbed on his way through the main office. "She was also a wonderful cook. I stole all her recipes. Want a muffin?"

Roy eyed Ed thoughtfully, then took the muffin. "Who is the young man?"

"Alfons Heidrich. He was my research partner." _My dearest, and for a while, only friend. _

"An alchemist?"

Ed shook his head. "No."

"Alchemy doesn't exist in our- the other world." Anya piped up.

"He wanted to make rockets that would take man to the stars, and I thought that maybe if he succeeded they could take me home." Ed said. "He believed me when I told him I came from another world. He tried to help me home." The reason Ed never brought up the other world was once he started talking about it, it was hard to stop. The memories wanted to just keep coming. "He was brilliant, and he was kind. And he was dying."

Ed traced the doomed young man's smile. He moved on to the next one, which was Alfons sitting in bed holding a newborn Anya, nervous but so happy not even the poor quality of the black and white print could dim it. "This picture was taken six months before he died. Seven months before we left Germany. We had given up on rockets by then. I had given up on ever getting home." He could still remember the day that he had realized it was hopeless. The day he had decided that it wasn't worth it, watched Alfons' whole body shake with the force of his cough and said, "No more."

Behind them Havoc's voice rang out. "Shorty! Where's my candy?"

Ed snapped back to the present.

Anya looked guilty and ducked under Roy's desk, taking the photos with her. Ed looked over his shoulder and said, "You might want to find a better hiding place. It only took her a few minutes to find it."

"Damn it."

Ed handed Roy another muffin. "No more skipping breakfast. It's bad for your health." Then he went out to see if Riza needed help.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

* * *

Roy gave them three weeks to settle in before he sent Ed on his first field mission.

"I need you to go to Duren." Roy told him.

Ed sat on the edge of the desk and looked at the map Roy had spread before him. "Wasn't that the place you sent me right after that fiasco with the mayor of Luensburg?"

"Yes." He handed Ed a thick folder. "The details are in here."

Ed took the folder and leafed through it. He nodded and looked back at Roy. "When should I leave?"

"Tomorrow."

"Alright."

Roy found it slightly disconcerting how easy it was. Even though Ed no longer had any reason to argue, he still half expected him to. "Will you be taking Anya with you?"

"Of course." Ed said. "She'd pitch a fit if I tried to leave her." He smiled at Roy. "Don't worry. I'm sure she'll keep me out of trouble."

The next morning when Ed came in everyone but Hawkeye, who had given him a ride to work, stared for a minute. They had grown accustomed to seeing him in his more formal, reserved clothing, which consisted of high-collared shirts and tailored slacks. But for traveling he had donned garb much more like what he had worn as a boy. Tight black jeans, a black shirt with sleeves long enough that they covered his hand to the knuckle and uniform jacket that was red instead of blue. He had even pulled his hair back into a braid.

Ed scowled when he noticed them staring. "What? No one is going to believe I'm the Fullmetal Alchemist unless I _look_ like the Fullmetal Alchemist." The chain of his watch caught the light as he moved towards Roy's office to retrieve Anya who had, as usual, run ahead of him.

He found her sitting on the edge of the General's desk arguing about exactly what the doodles on the edge of his paperwork were. She hopped down when she saw Ed. "Well, bye then!"

Ed perched himself on the side of the desk Anya had just vacated. He examined the doodles. "They are most definitely cows."

Roy sighed. "They're dogs." he insisted.

Ed squinted. "Well, I've never seen dogs like_ that_." He grinned at Roy.

Roy scowled at him, then tugged pointedly at the paper Ed was sitting on. "Do you and your daughter have a chair aversion that I'm not aware of?"

Ed shrugged. "You got rid of your old couches, bastard. These new ones aren't near as comfortable. How the hell can you stand to sleep on them? They're like granite- no, I've slept on granite." This statement was accompanied by a look that said the fact that Ed had slept on granite before was_ all Roy's fault._ "They're _worse_. But anyway, I was wondering if- what?"

Roy blinked and looked away from Ed, glancing down at the thick golden rope of hair that lay across his papers instead. "Your hair has gotten rather long." he said, because it was the first thing that came to mind and he could not put the other thing- something like confusion and warmth and affection- into words.

He felt Ed's eyes on him, calculating, then Ed seemed to decide that he would let the strange moment go and play along. He looked down, then tossed his braid back over his shoulder. "I guess it has. Hawkeye and Winry are of the opinion that I should cut some of it off. Said it's impractical." He shrugged again. "I guess it is. And washing it is a pain."

"Then why don't you cut it?"

"My hair is the only vanity that I have ever allowed myself." he said. After a moment of hesitation, he added, "And Esta had liked it long." Another elegant shrug, and Roy half wanted to reach out and shake the blonde. Edward had always been so alive, his gestures quick and passionate, unable to contain the sheer energy and determination that lay beneath his skin. Now his movements were graceful, restrained, almost choreographed. It was like watching an actor, and only little pieces of the old Ed would slip through. The set of his jaw when he was angry, the way he bared his teeth when he grinned.

"Hm."

"How did we get on the subject of my hair anyway?" Ed asked, tilting his head in confusion, but his eyes were sharp and… amused.

"You were complaining about my couches."

"And that lead to my hair?"

"Yes."

Ed nodded. "Right." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "I was wondering if you'd noticed that Sergeant James Monroe is spying on you."

"No. I hadn't."

"Well, he is. And if I'm not mistaken he's reporting back to Major General Hakuro." Ed reached into his pocket and pulled out an unmarked white envelope. "I took this from him last night."

"Took it how?"

"My wife and her family were a bunch of bloody crooks. They made sure my pick-pocketing was up to scratch." He said, voice matter of fact.

"Your wife was a thief?" Roy asked.

Ed shook his head. "No. She was a gypsy fortune teller."

"What's a gypsy fortune teller?" Roy asked.

"A crook with cards and crystal balls." He waved the envelope in front of Roy's face. There was something almost playful in his eyes. "As I was saying. He meets with Hakuro's secretary at the pub Blue Boar and that is where they exchange information. They usually meet on Mondays and Thursdays." Ed handed Roy the envelope and then straightened up. "Well, I have to go catch my train." He hopped off the desk and headed out the door. "Later!" he called over his shoulder.

* * *

"You cheated!" Anya accused.

Ed snorted. "So did you."

"Damn." Anya scowled at the cards between them.

Ed cuffed her upside the head. "No cursing."

Anya gathered up the cards and debated on shuffling them and dealing another game, but decided it wasn't worth it when they both cheated like they did. She shoved the cards back into her traveling pack. "I'm bored." she complained.

"Me too." Ed rested his chin on his fist and stared out the window.

Anya stared out the window too. "How did you stand it?" she asked.

Ed laughed. "I had far too much on my mind to ever get bored."

"Hm." Anya played with the golden bracelets on her wrists. She looked across the aisle and scowled. People had started staring at her almost the moment she got on the train. She noticed a middle-aged woman looking at her as if she was something that you would scrape off the bottom of your shoe and she stuck out her tongue. She was used to getting dirty looks. It seemed that her kind was disliked in both worlds. She was contemplating how much trouble she would get in for throwing chewed up wads of paper at her when the lady looked away suddenly. Anya looked up to find her father playing with his watch.

"That always seems to work." he said. He picked up his bag and put it under the table by his feet. "Come sit over here for a minute." When she was seated beside him, he unfolded the map that was in the folder he had been going through earlier. "See here? That's where we're going. It's pretty close to the border of Creta."

Anya nodded. They spent the next few hours poring over the map, Ed describing the towns in the area he had been to- which even he was surprised to find was almost all of them -and Anya demanding stories for each one. After a while, Anya's eyelids grew heavy, and when Ed told her to take a nap she didn't protest, just stretched out on the seat and, using Ed's lap as a pillow, went to sleep. This was exactly what Ed had intended from the beginning. Ed briefly missed the comforting form of his brother that had allowed him to sleep on the long rides between one lead and another before sighing and pulling out the information Mustang had given him to study further.

He glanced up once to find that the same woman that had been staring at Anya had down transferred her look of disgust to Ed. He took his daughter's example and stuck out his tongue.

* * *

Duren was dirt poor and cold, though it was only the end of September. It had been a long time since he had last been there, and though he doubted it had changed much it was only slightly familiar. His watch and Anya's dark skin drew only the briefest curiosity in Central, but in the small border down it drew wary stares and, in some cases, open hostility. He was not sure if it was his daughter or his watch that was drawing them, but to be safe he held Anya's hand the whole way to the inn.

"I hear that some kids got attacked just north of town?" he asked the owner of the inn once he had paid and Anya was absorbed petting the massive brown mutt that played at guarding the door.

The old man shook his head sadly. "The Mather twins. They were on their way to see their brother. Got mauled not twenty paces from his gate."

"They alright?" Ed asked, annoyed that he had to. Whoever had written the report had obviously not thought that the state of the children was in any way relevant.

"Doc stitched 'em up, and Stefan's doing fine now. But poor Elsa lost'er eye." The old man shook his head again, and his eyes hardened. "Damn military sent a State Alchemist. He said it was 'wild animals' so it wasn't their problem. I've lived in this here town for sixty-seven years, and I ain't never seen any animals like that."

"You've seen it?"

"Seen _it_? I've seen _them_. There are at least five of them. Probably more."

When he felt himself getting angry Ed looked up at the ceiling and counted to five, like Esta had always instructed him to do. The sheer incompetence of the military never ceased to amaze him. "So you're telling me a pack of aggressive chimeras has been wandering around the area for _two months_ and they just now sent me out here?"

The old man nodded. "We've been calling them and writing them almost every day since the State Alchemist left, but we've gotten no response until my wife thought to call Major Mustang- General Mustang now, I guess. Nice young man, Mustang. He helped us out back before the Eastern War, stayed for a whole month. He said he'd send someone right away, and I see he's still as good on his word as ever."

Ed was about to ask more- whether about the chimeras or Mustang he wasn't sure- when Anya piped up, "Papa-"

Ed recognized the tone, though hearing it surprised him, and he cut her off quickly. "It was a very long day. We should probably get to sleep." He hefted their bags with his right arm and took her arm with his left. "Come on, monster. Let's head upstairs." He smiled at the old man. "Goodnight, sir."

Anya was quiet after that. She didn't say anything until they reached their room, where she blurted out, "I'm sorry."

Ed waved the apology away. "It's alright." He set their bags down, then sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at her for a moment. "You… You haven't mentioned it, since we got here. I figured… I had figured that you lost the ability, like I lost my alchemy while on the other side. Why didn't you mention it?"

Anya shrugged. "I… didn't see why I should. I mean, I've always been able to do it."

Edward puzzled over this. Anya had inherited her mother's strange ability to glimpse into the minds and memories of others. When Esta had first revealed what she could do, Edward had been skeptical, and when she showed him proof of her abilities he had been baffled. He had met her friend Noah, who shared her strange gift, and the two women had let him study it. He had hoped that maybe through their strange powers he could find a way to use alchemy- or the equivalent of it. He had learned only that 'magic' could do what alchemy could not but it seemed it could in no way affect physical matter, and most importantly, could not open the Gate. Or so he had thought.

By the time Anya was born, he had completely given up on using magic to get home, and by the time Anya displayed signs of sharing her mother's power he had given up on getting home at all. Now he wondered if since Anya could use her powers in his world, maybe she would have been able to use alchemy in Esta's. What world's rules did she have to follow, being that she was a child of both?

Maybe that was what allowed her to use alchemy and her gift. The fact that she had the blood of both worlds running through her veins. It had been his father's blood, after all, that had allowed him to-

Ed cut off the thought, noticed Anya was watching him, still worried she had done something wrong.

"C'mere, brat." He reached out and tugged Anya into his lap. "What you can do… is not normal in either world. It shouldn't even be possible in this one."

"So… I have to be careful here, too?" she asked.

He nodded. "Now, what were you going to say?"

"The dog is very nervous. It can smell the chimeras, and they set it on edge. But …. It recognizes them. Or some part of them. So… I think they're part dog." She shrugged. "Animals are hard to read. They're…" she struggled for the right word, the new language still difficult for her.

"More primal? Basic?"

Anya nodded. "Yeah, but, that makes 'um easier sometimes, ya know? Like, what they're feeling is easy. But, like, facts are hard to get from them."

"Hm…" He ruffled her hair, kissed the top of her head. "Take a bath, brat. We have to get an early start tomorrow."

The next morning Ed got directions to the twin's house and the Mayor's. It took a good fifteen minutes for Ed to convince the kids' mother to let him see them, and he was just glad that their father was not home. From the reports, he had not cooperated with the first State Alchemist, and Ed doubted that the military's absolute lack of action had made the man any easier to deal with. The twins' mother led him into a living room that was threadbare but cozy where the children were sprawled on the floor. The boy was reading aloud from a book and the girl had her head pillowed on her arms, the eye that wasn't covered by the square white patch closed. They both had curly brown hair and round faces.

Their mother cleared her throat. "Stefan, Elsa." They both looked up. The boy's eyes went straight to Edward's shoulder, then down to the chain of his watch. The girl looked at Ed for only a second, and then her gaze swept down to Anya. "This is-"

"You're a State Alchemist." the boy said, cutting off his mother's nervous introduction. His tone was aggressive.

Ed nodded. "Yeah. I'm here to ask you about the attack."

The little boy glared at him. "We already told you. They were monsters! Not wild animals, damn it! If you're not going to listen don't ask at all!"

"Stefan!" his mother reprimanded sharply. She shot a scared look at Ed.

"No. It's okay." Ed crossed his arms over his chest, raised an incredulous brow. "Monsters? Aren't you a little old to believe in things like that?"

The boy jumped to his feet, glared furiously, completely unafraid, and Ed decided that he liked him. "Isn't the military supposed to protect people? Not harass injured little girls and threaten any one who doesn't agree with their version of events!" The boys fists were clenched, his teeth bared. While he'd been talking, he'd placed himself in front of his sister.

Ed nodded. "Yeah, the military is supposed to protect people. Shame there's so many assholes out there who forget that." He uncrossed his arms, stepped towards the boy, who looked confused by Ed's agreement but was doing his best to hold onto his righteous anger. "Now, do you have proof that Major Roth threatened you? Cause getting that particular asshole in trouble would really make me happy." Ed flashed the boy a grin.

"Papa." Anya sounded exasperated.

"Right." Ed held out his hand to the boy. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric."

The boy blinked, boggled, then: "YOU'RE THE FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST?!"

It was decidedly easier to get information after that.

It was much harder to get the kids to let him leave. He was not sure whether he was more amused or appalled at how he really had become legend now, the stories of his feats expanded and exaggerated insanely- or it could have just been the way that the boy said it, hero worship outdone only by his barely restrained excitement. Elsa was much more subdued than her brother was. After she gave her description, she sat shyly on the couch until Anya drew her into conversation, and then she snuck covert glances at Ed.

They ended up being talked into eating lunch with the twins, and Ed took the opportunity to ask their mother about the chimeras, the State Alchemist who had come before him, and recent events in the town. The woman was not a gossip, but she was shrewd, and once she realized that Edward was on their side, she was unafraid to express her opinions.

By the time Ed and Anya finally left, it was past noon. Ed flipped through his journal, jotted his impressions down while they were fresh in his mind. The descriptions the twins gave him amounted to the chimera's being huge, hairy, and having lots of teeth. They were also black, and if the children's fear hazed recollections were to be trusted, seamless.

"Seamless?" Anya asked. "Why is that important?"

"Because it means whoever made them is good." Ed sighed, shoved his journal back into his coat pocket. "And they're probably going to be a bitch to kill."

"You have to kill them?"

"Yes. Hey, why don't I drop you back at the inn before I head to the Mayor's? You can give Al a call and ask him if he ever talked with the alchemist who lived out here."

Anya sighed with the attitude of a kid who knows they're being sent out of the way. "Fine."

At the mayor's a pretty girl with dark skin and big blue eyes that that reminded Ed of a younger Rose answered the door. When he asked to see the mayor, she bowed to him. "I'm afraid Master Robin is out at the moment." she said.

Ed shrugged. "That's alright. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

The girl looked surprised. "If- if you want."

"Have you seen these chimeras?" Ed asked.

The girl shook her head. "No. But, um, Brant saw them. He helped Lewis drive them off." She glanced over her shoulder towards the staircase, twisted her hands in the front of her apron.

"Where can I find Brant?"

"Um, he works at the inn. He's the cook." she fidgeted. "Will that be all?"

"Almost." Ed said. "The… Mayor's brother is an alchemist, isn't he?"

The girl hesitated before answering. "Yes." There were nerves in the way she licked her lips, fear in the way she kept glancing over her shoulder.

"He moved back into town about three months ago, didn't he?"

The girl hesitated again before nodding.

"What happened to your face?" Ed asked.

The girl reached up and covered the bruise on her cheek, flushing slightly. "An accident in the kitchen."

A high, slightly accented voice came from inside the house. "Hannah. Who are you talking to?"

"The State Alchemist, Ms. Janel." the girl hastily stepped out of the way.

Janel turned out to be a gorgeous blonde with a perfectly painted smile that immediately set alarm bells off in Ed's head. "State Alchemist?" she asked.

"Lieutenant Colonel Edward Elric." Ed introduced himself. This was the kind of girl that was more cooperative the higher your rank.

The young woman's eyes widened. "Edward Elric? As in the Fullmetal Alchemist?" Her smile widened along with her eyes. "Why, come in. I'd be glad to do anything I can to help." She not so subtly ran her gaze over Ed. "Anything at all."

By the third day, Ed had learned three things. One: the children had not exaggerated when they said the chimeras were three times as large as their dog. In fact, Ed would have to say they were at least four times as large, and wondered how anyone could be stupid enough to try to call them wild animals. Two: not only were they big, ugly, and fast, but they were smart. He had the bruises to prove it. Three: the mayor's daughter was more frightening than the chimeras.

"Damn it!" Ed snarled to himself, trying to resist giving in to the childish temptation of stomping down the street. Anya hurried along beside him and tried not to giggle. Ed glared at her. "Yeah, sure monster. Laugh it up. No blond harpy is desperate to get into your pants." He immediately bit off the rest of the words at the puzzled look his daughter gave him, and hurried on with, "And you know what's the absolute worst? This town doesn't even have a library. Nasty chimeras, sex-obsessed bimbo, sex obsessed bastard, and no library. Why did I want my watch back again?"

"So the State has to foot your bills." Anya reminded him.

"Right."

There were actually nine chimeras in all, and Ed killed seven of them without too much trouble, the eighth almost took his arm off, and he left the ninth one alive too see if it would lead him back to its creator. It did not, but it did lead him to what was left of the lab where it was created. At first, it looked as if the chimeras had escaped and destroyed everything. The bars for the cages were bent, tables were splintered, and bookcases were overturned. Ed found the remains of at least five people scattered between the kitchen and the workroom. He thought one of them might have been the creator, until he found the room where the chimera's were combined and knew that the arrays that covered the floor and walls could not have made chimeras like the ones he killed.

"He left what he wanted us to find." Ed said when he returned to the inn, where he had left Anya in the care of the owner's wife, who had become smitten with the girl instantly.

"Do you want me too…" Anya trailed off, holding up her hands meaningfully.

Ed shook his head. He wanted more information, yes, but he did not want Anya to see the carnage in the lab. "No. I have what I need. Let's go home."

* * *

Roy was halfway through a letter to Al when he heard the commotion outside his office. He felt himself begin to smile and looked up just as the door opened. Ed stomped in and threw his report onto Roy's desk before collapsing onto Roy's couch. He kicked off his boots and pillowed his head on his arms.

"I am never going back to that town again!" he said. "Never!"

"May I ask why?"

Ed lifted his head to glare at Roy. "Because the Mayor's daughter is a fucking obnoxious cow who wouldn't know subtle if I shoved it up her ass!"

"I hear she's actually very, very beautiful." Roy said causally, noting the bandage above Ed's left eye and the bruise at the base of his throat.

"Yeah, and she knows it too. Spent the whole time trying to get me into her skirts." Ed shuddered.

Roy raised an eyebrow, smirked. "A beautiful woman trying to get you into bed with her is cause for revulsion?"

Ed's glare deepened. "Where did you get beautiful woman trying to get me into bed from? A vicious, gold-digging leech was trying to fuck my damn title! I'd have slept with the Mayor before I slept with her."

Roy raised his other eyebrow.

"Anyway." Ed sat up, serious. "Those things were nasty."

"So there were chimeras?"

Ed flicked a piece of lint at him. "You wouldn't have sent me if there hadn't been."

"Did you find who was making them?"

Ed shook his head. "No. I think he destroyed his own lab and his assistants to cover his tracks, and then set his chimeras loose to make sure we found it." Ed sighed, ran his hand through his hair, dislodging a few clumps from his braid. "I'm not sure. I mean, hell, I think he was trying to fake his own death, but it was so_ obvious_-"

"To you, maybe." Roy said mildly, flipping through Ed's report and scanning the arrays Ed had copied down. "What makes you think it was staged?"

"The arrays. There was no way they could have made chimeras like that." He got up and went to stand next to Roy. He pointed to a point on the array. "See that? Measurements are off. The chimeras were way bigger than that." He pointed to another point. "And that? Absolutely bogus symbol, meant to throw you off, so you don't notice _that_-" Ed pointed to another point. "-which is a gap in the array where the symbol or symbols that were used to stabilize the array and better channel the energy used inward used to be." Ed had one hip on the arm of Roy's chair by this point, and was leaning over Roy's arm, scowling at the array. His braid had fallen over his shoulder and it brushed Roy's thigh. Ed didn't seem to notice. "Basically, he's a greedy bastard who thinks he's more brilliant than he really is."

"And how did you arrive at this conclusion?" Roy asked, though he was coming to the same.

"Greedy, because he took out the only truly brilliant part of the array. Deluded as fuck, because if he was half as good as he thought he was he could have come up with an entirely different array to leave behind rather than this butchered version of what he probably considers his 'masterpiece'." Ed snorted in disgust. Then he leaned back a little. "I wish I'd been able to find out who he was. No one in Duren had seen anyone unusual, and it's obviously no one in the town, unless everyone from the creaky old bastard who runs the bar to the toothless brat who seemed really fond of my jacket are first class actors. I thought maybe the Mayor's brother was involved, being that he just got into town a few months ago and is supposedly a talented alchemist."

"Not him?"

Ed shook his head. "No. He was… smooth. Real smooth. We spent a good two hours talking each other in circles. I pushed, and he pushed back, but he was so… polite about it. Only lost his cool once, and even then just barely." Ed seemed thoughtful. "He was so damn civil, but he was slime. Fucking oozed confidence and good breeding, but he couldn't hide his inner asshole. Pampered prince used to getting everything he wanted. Really pissed him off when I wouldn't fuck him."

Roy looked at Ed sharply. The Ed he remembered would not have been able to say that so casually, would have omitted that part entirely, but Ed's expression was not embarrassed at all, was instead darkly amused.

"Gotta give him points, though. He kept playing his part fairly well, even when he was seething."

"So you think he's slime, but not involved at all?"

"That talented alchemist bit? Complete bullshit. He's a little boy who plays at alchemy, who plays at being a scholar, who plays at being a successful businessman, but in the end he's a spoiled brat who comes crying back to his brother the moment something goes wrong. Got in some trouble gambling, that's why he came home." Ed sighed. "Still. There's more there. I'm missing something, but I wasn't finding it in Duren, so I've decided to start back here. I'm going to go through all the records of similar incidents over the past five years or so. And I'm going to check out Major Roth."

"Hm." Roy placed the report on the desk. His arm brushed Edward's, and the younger man finally seemed to realize how close they were.

Now he looked embarrassed, though it was faint, and instantly replaced by a sheepish smile as he straightened, pushed his braid back over his shoulder and stepped away. "Need anything else?" Ed asked in a half-hearted grab at the proper military decorum it seemed he had completely discarded when it came to Roy.

"No. Go home and get some sleep, Fullmetal. You look dead on your feet."

* * *

The next morning Ed showed up with extra coffee and a sausage biscuit, which he placed in front of Roy with a scowl and a tired, "Skipping breakfast is bad for you, you know." Then he spent the whole morning helping Riza and reading through a thick stack of reports. Anya was, for what Roy realized was the first time since her arrival, absent. Ed seemed distracted. He went from reading, to writing in his journal, to talking with Hawkeye, and back again, eventually dumping the reports on the desk with a disgusted snort. It was then he dragged Roy into a paper airplane war. By lunch, his wandering mind had caught even Havoc's attention.

"Bored, boss?" he asked as he watched Ed transmute another paper airplane and throw it through Roy's open door way towards his head.

Roy caught it, wadded it into a ball, and chucked it back at him. Ed sighed, disappointed. "I was hoping he'd incinerate it."

"Edward." Riza said, finally, snatching his new airplane from his fingers. "Why don't you go get something to eat?"

"You're trying to get rid of me." he accused.

"Of course." Riza looked up at Roy as another paper airplane whizzed past her ear. "General, you too."

Ten minutes later found them walking down the street, Ed laughing to himself as Roy tried to scowl at him, but Edward's laughter had always been infectious, and Roy's irritation slipped away. He sighed.

"Where's Anya today?" he asked.

"She's spending the day with Fuery and his nephew." Ed said. "I figured it would be good for her to actually spend some time with someone her own age."

"So, what's for lunch, since you seem to have a destination in mind?" Roy asked as he followed Ed through a back alley and out onto a crowded street.

"There's a nice place about two blocks from here. It's run by a grumpy little couple from Creta, but they have the best meatloaf ever. You gotta try it."

A pretty girl in a hurry bumped into Roy on his blind side, tossed out a distracted apology. Ed reached around Roy lightening quick and grabbed her wrist with his automail hand.

"You're good kid, but not that good. Fork over the wallet."

Roy's hand went to his jacket pocket and his eyebrows rose.

"Don't know what you're talking about." Her voice was thick with the streets. "I'm in a hurry." She jerked against his hold, red tinted eyes panicked.

Ed sighed. "Look, you're good, but I've seen better, and you were careless. Snatch and grab doesn't work well unless there's a crowd." He looked at her thin face and worn but well mended dress. "And you should know better than to go after military. At least with civilians you have the few extra minutes while they're shouting for the _garda_." Ed held out his hand. "Hand it over and no harm done, right General?"

"Of course." Roy watched, amused, as the girl's face went from panicked to warily relieved. Ed's hold on her wrist had not loosened, but instead of appearing aggressive or threatening, he looked more like an aggrieved parent or older sibling, and the girl reacted to it. She reached into her own pocket and pulled out Roy's wallet.

She held it out to him sullenly.

The moment it was back in Roy's pocket, Ed loosened his hold, but he didn't release her. "What's your name, girl?"

The girl looked away, then muttered, "Lana."

"Lana." Ed reached into his own pocket, pulled out a scrap of paper and a pen, scrawled an address on it. "You're good, but not good enough. Next time you get caught it's going to be by someone who's not too hungry to bother hauling your ass into a cage."

"Who says I'll get caught again?"

Ed gave her a withering look that reminded Roy sharply of Hawkeye. "You can go there. It's not easy work, and the beds aren't the most comfortable, but they don't ask questions, and it's better than the streets. Tell them Fullmetal sent you." He took a step back from her. "And don't insult me. Wait to sneer and tear that up until you're out of sight, at least, since we let you off."

The girl looked between the two men warily, bowed slightly to Ed. "_Gestena_." she said, and then she was off.

Ed watched her go, a strange, almost wistful smile on his face. He remembered walking down the street with Esta, the scrawny little boy who knocked into him.

Watch it, kid.

Sorry, sir.

And then Esta had snagged the kid's arm, wagged her finger at him and laughed while she nipped into his pocket and grabbed Ed's wallet back, then spent a good ten minutes lecturing him about picking his marks better.

"I can't believe I didn't notice." Roy said, chagrined.

Ed grinned at him. "She _was_ pretty good." His grin widened. "But I'm better. Come on. I wasn't joking about the too hungry to bother part."

"Didn't you just eat half of Havoc's chocolate stash?"

"I'm an Elric. I'm _always _hungry."

"You know, I used to wonder where all that food went. It certainly didn't go _up_."

Ed's eyebrow twitched. "Bastard."

Ed stopped in front of a worn wooden door with chipped green paint that was set into a brick wall. Above it was a faded sign that said "Tavern" in simple, blocky gold letters. There were windows on either side of the door, but they were completely covered in advertisements, pictures, and anti-government posters.

"Here we are." He opened the door and they stepped inside.

The place was brightly lit, and crowded. Most of the conversation was in Cretan, and some of it halted at the sight of Roy's uniform, but then picked back up immediately when they saw who he was with. The grumpy old man standing at a table near the door waved at Ed, his scowl vanishing for a second, which Roy assumed was the closest the man ever came to a smile.

"Borden." Ed greeted.

"Elric!"

Ed winced and turned to face a small, wiry old woman who was brandishing a menu like a sword. Edward smiled his most charming smile. "Edna."

The woman glared. "Don't Edna me, boy. You disappear for two weeks, make me worried sick, then just pop in here and think you can sweet talk your way out of trouble! You might be able to charm the ladies-"

"And the men." Ed put in, face perfectly straight.

"And the men, yes, but I'm too old for you, so it's not going to work."

"So you think. One day, I shall wear you down." Ed said. He lifted a hand, lightly tapped Roy's chest with the back of his fist. "I learned from the best, you know."

The woman's glare disappeared and she laughed. "You must have." She gestured to a free table in the back. "Sit down. Want today's special or…?"

Ed thought a moment. "Yeah. For both of us."

"Drinks?"

Ed sighed. "Still have work. Soda for me."

Edna looked at Roy, and he said, "Tea."

"Thanks." Ed said. Then Ed grabbed Roy's elbow and tugged him towards their table. A few men shouted greetings as they passed them and a group of women waved.

"In here a little early today, aren't you?" one of the women asked, to which Ed said something back in Cretan that caused the woman to chuckle and shake her head.

"Where's the youngling?" a huge, burly man with an accent so thick Roy could barely make out what he was saying asked.

Ed sighed. "She ditched me for a younger man." Mock sorrow turned to very real amusement. "He has no idea what he's in for."

Another woman looked at Roy, dark eyes appraising. "Who's your friend?"

Before Roy could even think to flirt, Ed switched his grip from Roy's elbow to his hand, startling him, though he didn't show it. "He's an evil, evil bastard. Far too mean for you. And I found him first." Ed teased, sticking out his tongue.

The woman pretended to pout. "Juvenile."

"Greedy." Ed corrected.

They reached their table, but Roy barely noticed, too busy watching Edward, just enjoying the sight of him so relaxed. Playful. _I knew that he was still in there, somewhere_,Roy thought, watching Ed fend off more questions, all these in Cretan. Ed's voice was light, amused. The biggest difference between the Ed sitting before him and the Ed of six years ago, Roy decided, was the lack of anger in the Ed before him. It was so noticeable. Ed was, for the first time since Roy had met him, at peace with himself. Roy had a feeling that he knew who he had to thank for that, and once again decided that Edward's wife must have been an amazing woman. It did not surprise Roy. Ed had the uncanny ability to find truly amazing people no matter where you put him

"What?" Ed asked, and Roy realized that he had been staring again, this time at the way Ed's smile flashed white against the gold of his skin.

"Nothing. What did you order me, by the way?"

"Meatloaf." Ed said. "Cause, as I said, you just have to try it. Raymond is an awesome cook."

Only Ed, Roy decided, would frequent an oddball, anti-military establishment often enough to be on a first name basis with all the employees. "What does _g__estena_ mean?"

"It means thank you." Ed shrugged. "I picked up quite a bit of Esta's language, and though it's not the same as Ishbalan, it's close. Anya knows it better."

"And … the language you and Anya speak?"

"Which one? Greek? It's nearly the same as Cretan." Ed leaned forward, placed his chin on his fist. "It was like that, over there. Everything the same but different. The same people with different names, the same sky but you couldn't see the stars as clearly as you can here." Ed traced the wood grain on the table. "No alchemy, but something like it."

No Alphonse, but Alfons. No shit Colonel to make short jokes, but a smartass student with dark eyes and a sharp tongue who never let him have a moments peace. No Central, with her busy streets and mild seasons that rolled in an out like deep sighs, but there had been London, busy streets in darker colors. No way home, but he had made a new one, hadn't he? He had made a new one and it hadn't been so bad, really. He had missed everything that he'd left behind but he was good at looking forward, and really, the future had looked all right, even with war on the horizon and his father's health deteriorating. They had been planning on going to India, then maybe Africa, or Egypt. Seeing the new world since it was their world now.

Then Envy had showed up, and everything had gone to hell, as his life was wont to do.

Roy touched his arm lightly. "Ed?"

He almost jumped, then shook his head. "Eh. Sorry."

"It's alright."

Ed studied Roy for a moment, and felt something in him lighten. This was not the same bastard Colonel who had snarked, smirked, and made Ed see red. He was the same, but different. Not better, not worse. Just different. His world was no better than the other, just different. This life was not better than the life he'd had in the other world, just different. Ed tipped back in his chair. "It's nice, you know."

"What's nice?"

Ed smiled, and Roy was hit with the fact that there was a world of difference between a grinning Ed and a smiling Ed. "Being back home."

Edna appeared out of nowhere, smacking Ed in the back of the head with the edge of the large silver tray she was carrying. "No tipping." she scolded, setting their meals in front of them.

The rest of the meal was spent discussing recent office gossip and snickering over Falman and Sheska's strange courtship. Neither of them noticed the young woman watching them from the corner, painted lips curved upwards in the satisfied smirk of a predator finally cornering its prey.

"Edward Elric." she whispered to herself. "This is going to be fun."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

* * *

"It's late." his sister told him. "We should just find a motel to stay at."

"That would cost too much. The next train to Central is in a few hours. We'll catch it." The station was almost deserted, cold and wet; it made the prospect of even the rundown rooms they'd been renting seem inviting.

"Tch." His sister flumped back onto the bench, folding her arms behind her head and scowling. "I'm sick of traveling."

Cheung shrugged. "There's no help for it." He opened up the book in his lap.

His sister sighed, closed her eyes. "Hn." When she opened her eyes again they were hazy, soft in the way that meant she was thinking of all they'd left behind- all they couldn't leave behind, no matter how hard they tried. Sorrow seemed to be the only thing that ever softened her features, and Cheung wished for a time long past when that wasn't so.

"-I know. _Bastard._ You think I meant to- what? Fuck you!" the furious half-shout of the young man on the payphone a little ways away cut through Cheung's thoughts.

He looked up and over, watched the man clench and unclench his fist. There was a little girl sitting at his feet, humming under her breath and drawing happily in an oversized sketchbook balanced on her knees. She looked completely unperturbed by the man's rising ire.

"-No. No. I'm catching the next train back. Shut up! Why would I miss _you_, you delusional old man? You're-"

The little girl frowned down at her sketch critically as the argument swelled and shifted above her, from annoyed to exasperated to frustrated. The crude words and best wishes for an eternity spent in a warm climate were ignored happily as the girl traded a red crayon for a blue.

"-tch. Whatever." the young man rolled his eyes, and his lips twitched into an involuntary smile, which he immediately clamped down on, looking mildly annoyed at himself. "Yeah yeah yeah. Goodnight, bastard. I'll call you if we get delayed again." He hung up unceremoniously, scowled at the phone for a minute. "Fucker." he said.

"Lazy bone Generals should be asleep this time of night." the little girl said. There was an accent hanging on the edge of her words that Cheung couldn't place.

The young man looked down, scowl softening. "So should little monsters."

The little girl just grinned up at him, and Cheung had to look away.

"M'takin a nap." his sister said. "Wake me when the train gets here."

"Alright." He stared down at his open book.

…_I give you to understand that, unless you take like things in the beginning of the decocting and guide them subtly until they all be made water, till then you have not found out the work…_

He was tired, and the words twisted themselves into knots somewhere between the page and his mind. An old, old alchemy book, he had found it in the bookshop they'd browsed through while waiting for the train in the last city they'd been in, and with guilt thick in his gut he'd slipped it into his bag when the pretty girl who had probably been the owner's daughter wasn't looking. It wasn't the first thing he'd stolen but it was the first thing he'd stolen that he didn't need to live.

His stomach growled loudly and he steeled himself to ignore it, forced himself to focus on the passage before him.

But the little girl laughed, and she was just the right age that her laughter made his chest hurt.

"_Brother! Brother, look!" Small hands tugging on his sleeve. "Look!" _

Precise booted footsteps had Cheung looking up again, and he blinked as two uniformed soldiers made their way across the station to the man lounging on the bench.

They stopped in front of him. Cheung half-expected them to drag the man off the bench. He did look kind of shady, and no one who wore that much black and leather could be anything but trouble, but the soldiers snapped two crisp salutes. "Lieutenant Colonel."

The man sat up straighter, sighed. "Yeah?"

"You're needed at the 12th warehouse."

"Fine." the blond said. He stood, grabbed his bag and a battered suitcase, hefted both easily in his right arm, obviously stronger than his lithe build would have one believe. "I _knew_ I should have tried to catch the earlier train."

The little girl shoved crayons and sketchbook into her own small bag and stood, taking the man's (brother? father?) free hand. They followed the soldiers out of the station.

"Warehouse 12… isn't that where we saw-"

Xue-li cut her brother off, sitting up and swinging her feet to the ground. "Let's follow them."

Cheung tried to protest, but his sister never listened to him, and she was halfway out of the station before he snatched up their bags and ran after her.

* * *

"Oh. Gross." Ed squinted down at what had, at one time, been a human being. Probably just one. He was going by the shoes, because that was the only thing in the array that was recognizable.

Anya was outside in the car with the pretty, eager to please female soldier that had followed Ed around like a puppy his whole stay in West City. It was nearly three in the morning. Ed figured that didn't say much for his parenting skills, but he had been _trying_ to get the brat home, before the idiot splattered in front of him had decided to… well, Ed wasn't sure what he had been doing. Because it wasn't what whoever had drawn the array wanted Ed to think he'd been doing. The array, had it went wrong, would have torn the man apart from the outside, but this man had been torn apart from the inside. Not blown apart from the inside, as Scar had done, but torn apart.

It worried him, sometimes, how scenes like this didn't affect him as much as they once had. That corpses, no matter how mangled, had ceased to be terrifying, had become just another part of the job. Admittedly, this was worse than usual. This kind of job made him regret the decision to have Anya travel with him, because she knew that every time she was left outside it meant someone was dead.

Ed went over the room inch by inch, but again the array and the corpse were his only clues. It was the third time he had seen a scene like this. Duren and then, two weeks later, a small border town in the West where the local alchemist had been found in a bloody smear on her kitchen floor. Ed was the current expert on biological transmutations, but he had a feeling that wasn't why he was being assigned this cases.

"Who did you last see, you old bastard?" Ed asked, flipping through a bloodstained journal. Unfamiliar code, but he would break it. Arrays, equations, personal notes. It took Ed less than ten minutes to break down the code enough to see what the alchemist had been working on. Drugs. The man had been making illegal drugs with alchemy. Hallucinogens. Very, _very_ powerful hallucinogens.

Ed took all the man's journals, all his notes, and left the rest for the Investigations Department.

He went out to the car where his daughter was crashed in the back seat under his long black coat. The soldier- Mary? Margret? -stood and saluted, and damn, he wasn't sure he would ever get used to that. "How long has she been out?" Ed asked.

"She fell asleep a few minutes after you went inside, sir."

"Good." Ed watched her for a second. Many people, he knew, would be appalled by the way he dragged his daughter across the country, but Esta would have been thrilled.

"Sir?"

"Lieutenant." He glanced down at the file in his hand, rattled off the alchemist's home address. "You know where that is?"

* * *

"Why the hell are we following him? The place is crawling with soldiers. We can't see anything-"

"Shhh!"

Cheung crossed his arms and gave an annoyed huff, hunched down in the alley and ignored his sister. Stubborn, headstrong pain in the ass. Crouched in a wet, filthy alley at three in the morning was_ not_ Cheung's idea of fun.

He looked longingly back in the direction of the train station-

-and saw the woman.

Fair hair and expensive clothes. The umbrella she held shadowed the top of her face, but Cheung could make out a smile on her darkly painted lips.

The woman's smile widened, and overcome by curiosity Cheung peeked back out around the corner and saw the man from earlier emerge from the building, a box under one arm and a folder in his hand. He stopped and talked with a female soldier standing next to a military car for a few minutes, then slide into the passenger seat of the car. When the car drove away, Cheung looked back towards the woman only to find she had gone.

"Xue-li, did you see-"

"Shhh!"

Cheung sighed.

"Damn it! What do you think happened? Do you think it had to do with those weirdoes earlier?" His sister hunched down next to him, chewing the corner of her nail.

The night before they had slept in the warehouse, hoping to save money. They had slept in worse places, and winter's chill hadn't crept up on West City yet. They'd been surprised early in the morning by raised voices and breaking glass. A middle-aged, beady-eyed man had been arguing with a group of men in business suits that had held themselves like soldiers. When they had seen the men were armed the siblings had grabbed their bags and beat a hasty retreat. They'd tried to slip out the back, but there were men at either end of the alley, standing guard. They'd ended up slipping up to the roof and leaping the small gap to the next building over.

"Probably." Cheung looked towards the soldiers. "You think… we should tell them we saw something?"

"Are you crazy?! _We'll_ get in trouble! They'll think we were involved somehow." His sister elbowed him. "Besides. That _bastard_ is probably still looking for us."

Cheung shifted. "Maybe… we should head back to the station." He thought of the woman's smile, and decided that whatever was going on, he wanted no part of it.

"Maybe that guy will be there. The Lieutenant Colonel. He didn't seem like a bad sort."

"I don't know." Cheung pictured the man's disinterested slouch, the black leather boots and long black coat. He had looked like a bad sort to him. Cheung snorted. His sister had probably liked the man's boots.

In the end it didn't matter, because they didn't see the Lieutenant Colonel at the station. They debated on waiting until the noon train, but Cheung pointed out that if they did that, they wouldn't get in to Central until almost Midnight. They needed to find work, to find somewhere to stay. They couldn't waste time. They caught the earliest train they could.

Hunched together over their meager belongings, they counted out their money.

"If we're careful, very careful, we have enough to last us a week." Cheung said.

His sister pocketed her half of the money. "We'll have to be careful, then."

Cheung nodded. He looked up and did a quick scan of their car, as was his habit, and froze.

Four seats away, looking out the window with a smug smile on her face was the woman. Across from her was a young man with short, dark hair and fair skin. He was playing with a silver watch, flipping the lid open and closed, his expression bored and slightly sulky. As if sensing Cheung's gaze, he looked up and over, and their eyes met. He smiled slowly, dark eyes crinkling up in amusement, and Cheung felt it crawl up his spine. He looked quickly away.

Whatever the two of them were involved in, Cheung really,_ really_ wanted no part in it.

* * *

Ed and Anya dragged into town at nearly midnight the next night, Ed literally dragging, Anya fast asleep on his hip and his bag trailing along on the ground behind him, his suitcase feeling ten times heavier than it had when he packed it a week ago. When they got home, he dropped their baggage at the foot of the stairs and hauled them both up to their rooms. He tucked Anya into bed, and then made it down the hall to collapse onto his own bed, where he was out in seconds.

The next thing he knew the mattress dipped and someone tucked his hair behind his ear.

"Edward."

He knew that voice. It made his chest ache. "Go away."

"How rude." Lips brushed against his temple. "I just got here, and already you're telling me to go away." He could feel her breath flutter over his closed eyes, warm and moist.

"You're not really here." he told her. He didn't need to tell her she was dead. He could smell it on her breath.

"Are you sure, Edward?" Cold lips against his. He opened his mouth out of habit, tasted decay and couldn't recoil, because it was Esta, it was _Esta_. "Maybe I never left."

He opened his eyes to an empty room, sunlight inching across the floor through the gap in the curtains.

Past noon already.

He rolled over so he was facing away from the window but didn't close his eyes again, afraid she would be there waiting. It was the third time he had dreamed of her like that. Each time as vivid as the first. It was the first time he had dreamed of her without being so drunk he could barely stand, though.

_I'm tired. Too many corpses and not enough sleep._

He scrubbed his hand over his face and sat up. He didn't have time to sit around going over his nightmares. He had to take Anya shopping, the brat had outgrown most of her clothes, and he needed to write up his report so he could take it in before Friday, maybe stop by the library and get more information on the kind of drugs Breuer had been cooking up. He needed to see if Major Roth had been in West city lately, needed to-

"_Are you sure, Edward?"_

There were still days when Ed didn't want to get out of bed, everything weighing him down, his father and his wife and-

But he didn't have to want to get out of bed. He just had to _need_ to get out of bed.

He just had to take that first step.

His bedroom door creaked open and Anya poked her head inside. She smiled sleepily when she saw he was awake. "Morning, Papa."

Of course, it helped to have Anya there to nudge him along.

* * *

Ed had forgotten just how long clothes shopping for little girls could take. Especially shopping for his little girl, who was developing her own personal sense of style. One that left him unsure whether he should be amused or aggravated.

"What about this?" Anya held up a black sweater that was at least three sizes too big for her.

"That's going to look like a dress on you."

Anya nodded. "Exactly." She held up a pair of white leggings. "That's why I'm going to wear it with these!"

Ed rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighed. "If that's what you want." He mentally ran through all the clothes they had bought so far. "But you're going need something normal, brat. Like… that." he pointed to a cute pink dress, then really looked at it and winced. "Or not that. But you get what I mean."

Anya's attention turned to dresses, and her father's wandered to previous shopping trips, in a different city a world away.

"… _Esta. I absolutely refuse to subject our child to the indignity of that outfit." Ed said, staring at the bundle of pink and white ruffles._

_At his side, Esta titled her head, eyes narrowed. "That mean you think it ugly too, right?" Her English was worse than her sister's but improving. She shook her head. "What kind of sick person put their baby in this? She'll look like one a those little iced cakes." _

"_I think it's cute." Irina- _don't call her Winry don't call her Winry she's not_- defended. _

"_Yeah, well, I think the Queen of England a shape-shifting vampire from Egypt." Esta shrugged. "Guess everyone crazy in their own way." _

_The girls degenerated into good-natured bickering, and Ed sighed, shifted his hold on his daughter. "What do you think, baby? You like it?" he asked. _

_Six months old and busy sucking on the end of her father's ponytail, Anya shifted her attention to the dress her father held up in front of her. She gave it a through once over with bright golden eyes. The three adults watched, waiting for her reaction._

_Her little nose wrinkled and her lips pursed the same way they did when she didn't like what she was being fed. "Eeww." _

_Ed put the dress back, smiled down at his daughter, nuzzled her silky cap of black hair. "That settles that, then."_

"Papa, what about this one?"

Ed looked down at Anya as she showed him a simple red dress that would probably not be so simple when she was done accessorizing. He smiled, ruffled her hair. "Looks good. Come on, you still need some shoes."

Later he would look back and wonder if maybe he should have put his foot down about the leather boots.

* * *

Roy scanned Ed's report. It was concise and to the point, typed up neatly and even had copies of the crime scene photos and a few of the arrays he'd found, with the missing symbols circled and his own guess at what they had been put in with red ink. A huge change from the reports of his youth, that usually went, "_Found the terrorist group. Kicked the leader in the nads. Local law enforcement took over. You owe me a new coat, you bastard."_ and were often scrawled on the back of train timetables or on hotel stationary and covered in rude doodles.

Thinking about them made Roy smile, and Ed raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Nothing."

Ed shrugged, propped his feet on Roy's desk just to be a pill and kept eating. He had brought Roy lunch along with his report, and Roy had half suspected it was to soften him up for whatever damage he had caused, but he saw now that it had just been Edward being nice. The scary thing was it didn't even surprise him anymore.

Roy set down the report.

Ed slurped up noodles, actually waited until he was done chewing to speak. "It was the same as the last two. Everything from the setup of the lab to the style of the arrays, but this time they got sloppy. Either that or Breuer was expecting them and the other two weren't."

"How so?"

"Well, the other two were torn apart by the rebound. You ever seen someone torn apart by a rebound?"

Roy shook his head.

"Well, it's ugly." Obviously not ugly enough to damage Ed's appetite, as he shoveled in more noodles before continuing. "Tears you apart, but from the outside. Breuer was torn apart from the inside."

"You mean like how Scar used to kill?"

"No. I mean torn apart. There wasn't enough left of him for me to tell how it was done." Ed shrugged. "But I got what I needed. And guess who was in West City the day before? Major Roth."

"Have you looked into his files?"

"Tried. General Marshal refuses to let me see them."

"You could have-"

"Asked you, I know." Ed smiled at him. "But I don't want him to know I suspect anything. So I've just been keeping tabs on his movements, and I'm having Sheska snoop for me."

"You seem to have everything under control."

"Yeah. Sure." Ed sucked absently on his chopsticks, eyes half-lidded and focused on a spot somewhere around Roy's shoulder. After a few seconds, he shook himself out of his thoughts, dropped the chopsticks into the empty cardboard box and tossed it into the bin. He licked his lips, and Roy found himself watching Ed's mouth, snapped his gaze back up to Ed's eyes as the blonde said, "Gracia wanted me to tell you that she expects you for dinner on Friday night. Said it just like that, too, and said that if you try to think of an excuse, then I'm to use any and all methods at my disposal to get you over there." Ed grinned. "God I missed her." He got to his feet. "I'm going to hit the library before I go home. Later, Mustang."

Roy tried to tell himself that he was not disappointed when Edward left. And if he was, it was only because he now had no excuse not to do his paperwork.

* * *

"There is someone I want you to watch for me." she said.

"Who?" Lazy and obviously bored, her lunch partner picked at a plate of pasta.

"Edward Elric."

Laziness vanished, replaced by shock and disbelief. "The Fullmetal Alchemist? Are you _insane_?"

She raised a single brow, mocking. "Don't tell me you buy into all that garbage about him?"

Disbelief faded, replaced by nothing at all. Blank faced, her companion sipped at tea long gone cold. "The rumors must have some truth to them."

"Of course. But they are, I am sure, greatly exaggerated. Besides, it has already been decided. You will watch Fullmetal."

"From afar?"

She nodded. "For now."

Setting the empty cup aside, her companion stood. "Fine."

She stayed, finished her lunch, ordered dessert. She lingered over it and replayed Fullmetal's smiling face in her mind. Confident. Relaxed. _Happy_. Reaping the benefits of a position, of a fame that should have been hers. But not for long.

* * *

Edward opened the door, a beer in his hand and a green-eyed blonde terrorist on his back. His face looked freshly scrubbed and his lips were darker than usual. He was smiling. The warm, friendly smile that he flashed at Roy increasingly often.

"Hey General."

"Hello, Edward."

In a single smooth move, he flipped Elysia off his back, under his arm, and into Roy's. Unfazed by the swift change in position, Elysia crowed happily, "Uncle Roy!"

Roy kissed the girl's cheek and hugged her close. "Hey."

"Uncle Ed said you'd play chess with us!" Elysia said.

Roy raised an eyebrow, looked over the little girl's shoulder at Ed. "He did, did he?"

"Yep."

Anya appeared by her father. "You will, won't you?"

Elysia wiggled out of his arms. Anya stepped up to his side. They both gave Roy their most hopeful looks.

"Well, I suppose-"

"Great!" the girls said, each grabbing one of his arms and pulling him towards the living room.

Neither of them were any good at chess. Elysia hated having to sacrifice any of her pieces and bit her lip sadly when they were taken. Every move she made was to help her pieces escape from Roy's. Anya had no qualms about putting the pieces in harm's way and was disturbingly bloodthirsty, having inherited her father's "just keep bashing away at the enemy until they fold" strategy. Neither of them knew to plan more than one move ahead.

It was the most fun Roy'd had playing chess in years.

Halfway through their second game Ed appeared on his right side and handed him a cold beer, leaned against the arm of his chair. "Going easy on them?" he asked, just soft enough that the girls couldn't hear. His eyes were on the girls and his posture was lazy and relaxed.

When Roy shrugged noncommittally, his shoulder brushed against Ed's hip.

"Uncle Ed. You gotta help us beat him." Elysia pleaded.

Ed laughed. "Are you kidding? The bastard would kick my ass."

Roy didn't show the momentary surprise that flashed through him at Ed's easy admittance. He just let his lips curve into a smug smirk. "You never know." he said. And he meant it. Ed had done nothing but surprise him since his return.

"Yeah. You used to beat Mr. Nakamura all the time." Anya said. The girls turned their pleading looks on Ed.

Who had obviously built up an immunity to them, as he just raised an eyebrow and said, "Dinner in ten minutes." before walking back towards the kitchen.

Anya sighed. "Man. I ain't never seen him lose, neither." She eyed Roy. "We're screwed."

Elysia chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Hm…" Her eyes slid to Anya's and they grinned. "Time for plan B."

Ed and Gracia both poked their heads into the room when they heard the chair overturn and Roy's surprised "Umph!" as two little girls landed on him, laughing and searching for ticklish spots. Gracia smiled and Ed rolled his eyes, walked over to haul the girls off Roy and into the kitchen. The girls, however, were still a little miffed about him leaving them to their defeat, and had other ideas.

Ed yelped as Elysia grabbed his arm and Anya tugged on his leg, using the weight of his automail to throw him off balance and onto the floor. "Hey-" He rolled out of Elysia's immediate tickling range and tried to stand, tripped over Roy who was doing the same and ended up on his butt between the General's knees, where the girls full-body tackled him, knocking both him and Roy onto their backs. Roy let out his second "Umph" as Edward's shoulders hit Roy's stomach and the combined weight of Edward and the girls knocked the air out of his lungs.

The girls then quickly scrambled off their victims and ran to the kitchen, calling, "Suckers!" over their shoulders and hiding behind the task of setting the table.

Ed pushed himself up, scowled after them and then- he laughed, rubbed his ribs where Elysia had elbowed him and looked over his shoulder at Roy. His ponytail had been knocked askew and he tugged it out with an annoyed huff so he could redo it. Still sitting between Roy's legs, and Roy wasn't sure what he found stranger, that Edward didn't mind Roy being in his personal space or that he was glad Ed didn't mind. Hair re-secured, Ed turned a little, tilted his head, then reached out and straightened Roy's eye patch as casually as he had straightened Roy's collar that morning all those months ago. He stood and offered Roy a hand up.

"Geeze, Mustang." he teased. "All that desk work taking its toll?"

Roy reached out and thumbed at the hint of color under Ed's eyes. "Been playing with Gracia's makeup?"

Ed's cheeks pinked a little, but his teasing smile widened, took on a playful edge. His whole demeanor changed, becoming shy and thrumming with nervous tension. "Like it? According to the little green eyed devil spawn, Sierra Sunset is the perfect color for me." He batted his eyelashes, gave Roy a sweet, girlishly hopeful smile and looked at him from under thick black lashes, bit his lower lip- then the expression crumbled and he laughed again. "Oh. Damn. You should have seen your face just now." Ed straightened, back to being lazy, relaxed. "I lost three games of Go Fish to the girls, so I had to be their lab rat. Evil little shits."

"You let them put makeup on you?"

Ed's smile widened to show off unusually sharp canines. "Yeah?" he said, the tone of his voice saying he would just love for Roy to make some scathing comment so he could put his automail fist in the older man's face.

Roy just shrugged, leaned forward and caught Ed's chin, lifted the startled young man's face to the light and made a show of studying it. "Actually, the color is rather flattering."

He was hoping for a blush but Ed just rolled his eyes and jerked away. "Whatever. Bastard. Come on, let's eat."

All through dinner, he was oddly aware of Edward's presence. He wanted to blame four years of celibacy combined with the way Edward had felt sprawled between his legs. But that didn't explain the way he had watched Ed days before as he licked sauce from his lips, didn't explain the way his eyes would often be drawn to the ripple of golden hair down Ed's back or the way Ed's jeans fit snug to his thighs. He looked farther back, tried to blame Ed's hand in his at Borden's, Ed's casual flirting, Ed's smile across the table, happy, relaxed, and directed at him and only him. But he found he had to think back even farther than that, to Ed strolling into his office and asking for his watch back, putting himself right into Roy's hands and acting as if there was no safer place to be.

(Roy hoped it didn't go back further than that, couldn't stomach the thought that it had started with a teenage Edward snarling and seething, spread out over Roy's couch in a way that, combined with the tight leather pants, left nothing to the imagination.)

After dinner and dessert, there was coffee and conversation in the living room. Office gossip and brief jaunts down memory lane that didn't hurt so much with Elysia and Anya playing cards at their feet and Ed an arms length away. When the girls were drooping with fatigue, they went for their coats and shoes and Roy offered Ed and Anya a ride home. Gracia bid them each goodnight with a kiss on the cheek and exacted from them promises to come to dinner next Sunday night.

The drive was nearly silent, Anya dropping off to sleep almost the moment the car started moving and Edward stroking her hair distractedly and staring out the window, but it was a comfortable, sleepy silence. When they pulled up to Ed's, Ed didn't immediately get out. He looked over at Roy, smiled a little.

"You know, that was kind of nice."

"It was."

Ed chuckled. "Who'd have thought we could actually get along for an entire evening?" He shifted Anya, slid out of the car. "Thanks for the ride. Later."

* * *

The next couple of months went by in a procession of cold, wet, gray days. Four times Ed was sent to the edges of the country. Each time he ran into dead alchemists, dead ends, and Major Roth's name. The fucker was either incompetent or covering someone else's ass, and with each town Ed became more determined to figure out which one it was.

He kept a careful eye on Anya, but, bit by bit, she seemed to be coming out of the shell she'd retreated into when Envy had- he still had a hard time thinking about it. Tried not to. He schooled Anya himself in the long hours between one destination and the next, and in the back of his mind, he wondered how much longer their current arrangement was really going to work.

He expected to miss Alphonse more than he did, but it seemed as if ten years in a foreign world had successfully weaned him away from his brother, and he was content with the daily phone calls and occasional visits, his to Resembool to get his automail tuned up, and Al's to Central.

The first time Al had visited, he had said, "I actually get to visit you now instead of the General and your grave. Of course, your grave wasn't half as rude-" He had been cut off by Ed cuffing him upside the head, and they'd ended up playfully scuffling across the living room floor until they knocked over a lamp. Ed's panicked cursing had Al laughing until he was in tears.

Ed_ could _have been miffed by the fact that Al spent just as much time with the General as he did with his big brother, but found that he didn't mind at all. It was comforting to see how much Roy cared about his brother, to know that the older man had been there for Al when Ed had not been able. Al liked to get them all together, usually by making his brother take him to lunch and then inviting the General along. Ed never complained about this, as it usually ended up with Al and Anya eating a hole through the General's wallet, not his, and it was fun to see how his little brother and his daughter had Roy wrapped around their fingers.

He was spending a lot more time with Roy than he ever would have imagined. Of his own free will and usually on his initiative, to boot. They went to lunch together at least twice a week, and Ed sometimes took his work into the General's office, where he sprawled out on the couch and instigated minor arguments when he got bored.

He boxed Major Roth in bit by bit, but didn't move in yet, because he sensed there was something deeper, that Major Roth was just a pawn.

He often dreamed he was in Lab 5, the Slicer brothers and the homunculi standing in a loose half circle behind him talking amongst themselves, their voices a low buzzing hum as he studied the disproportionately large chessboard before him, tried to look to the other side and see his opponent but couldn't raise his eyes above the opposite edge of the board. Sometimes Esta was there beside him, her breath sickly sweet as she said, "Chess is the one game I never bothered to learn to play. It's too hard to cheat." Laughed, soft and lovely and over.

Sometimes it was Anya who was beside him, studying the board seriously, sucking on the ear of the stuffed bear that lay buried in the rubble with her uncle's body. Her small hands would hover over the board but not touch, and she would ask, "Which one am I?" Her right hand would stop over the Queen that Ed knew, the way you know things in dreams, had been broken and remade. "This one is me, right? This one is me."

He didn't understand why he came up from the dreams shaking with terror. He'd had so many worse.

It was after three weeks of those dreams, on a night when Anya was sleeping over at Gracia's, that Ed hit the bar with Breda and Fuery. He wanted to lose himself in the alcohol until the images left his brain, but he didn't like drinking to that point. He had done that too much in the other world those first three years. Drank until he was pleasantly numb, until the world slipped and slid away- and woke tangled in unfamiliar sheets the next morning, sometimes sore and alone, sometimes wrapped around a stranger.

This time when he used another warm body to distract himself, he was almost sober. When the curvy blonde in the stoplight red dress hit on him, he hit back. He went back to her apartment with her and lost himself in pale, smooth skin and too much jasmine perfume, the taste of cigarettes and cheap beer. The first sex he'd had since he and Esta had made love in a rundown motel room with blood on the floor and desperation dragging at their chests, but he didn't think of that. He didn't let himself think about anything but the woman whose nails were digging into his back and whose name he knew he wouldn't remember the next morning.

He wasn't drunk enough to be able to sleep next to a near stranger, and ended up slipping out of the apartment and to his own shower and bed before the sun even rose.

He tried that four more times with varied partners and equally varied levels of success.

When he slept the dreams were back, and he crossed sex off his list of stress relief possibilities.

Early the next Monday morning, he hit the gym.

It was the first time he'd ever used the militaries facilities. The first time he'd ever needed to, since before he'd always had his brother to spar with, and in the other world there had been Nakamura Shuu and Tony Visconti. Two completely different styles with two completely different minds behind them to keep him on his toes.

An hour of sweat and adrenaline kept his mind clear, kept him limber and more relaxed all day; but it did nothing for the dreams.

By the time winter settled in to Central, Ed was running on four hours of sleep a night. Riza was the first to notice the well-hidden strain and confronted him one afternoon at the shooting range.

"Edward," she asked between rounds. "Are you alright?"

He grinned at her. "Of course."

"Edward."

His grin faltered, flickered, died. He looked down the range to his target. "It's… I've just been having bad dreams, is all." He shrugged, and she watched him, steady and searching. "Just… weird dreams, you know? Not even frightening, not like what I dreamed about at first. Envy and that mad bastard and Esta with her-" And his throat closed up there, like it always did. And he swallowed down the horror, like he always did, and went on, "An' anyway, they're just odd. Fucked up, an' when I wake up I'm. It's." Another shrug, this one a bit jerkier. "I guess I haven't been sleeping well."

Riza unloaded her gun, was silent a few moments. Ed could see she was gathering herself up for what she was about to say. "After Ishbal… and after that night, I couldn't sleep right for months. Nothing I did helped the nightmares. Not sex, not alcohol, not running myself to exhaustion." It was her turn to shrug. "So I swallowed my pride and went to the doctor, asked for sleeping pills. It felt like giving up, but I couldn't afford to be tired. I couldn't afford to get rundown." A wry smile. "Who would have watched over the General?"

Ed hesitated before asking his next question, but she had brought it up, and his conversation with Gracia months before had made him wonder. "Riza. Just how bad was the General, while I was gone?"

Riza looked down at her gun. Was silent for so long Ed almost thought she wasn't going to answer, but then she said, "I'm certain he put a gun in his mouth. I'm less certain what stopped him from pulling the trigger." She smiled bitterly. "It wasn't me, that's for certain. I… I couldn't help him. I didn't know how. And he didn't want to be helped."

"He loves you." Ed told her, because it was true.

"I know." She looked up at him, met his eyes. "But it was your return that made him live again."

Ed had no idea what to say to that.

The next day he made a doctor's appointment.

Riza was right. It felt like giving up. But he had Anya to think about, and she deserved a father that wasn't testy and tired.

* * *

They were in his office- his old office, the one in East City with rain pattering against the windows. They were arguing, but he wasn't sure what they were arguing about. They were always arguing, weren't they? The words didn't matter, never mattered. They were hurled back and forth without thought and what really mattered was not mentioned, was acknowledged only in the tension between them.

He slammed his hands on either side of the boy's hips. Ed stared up at him defiantly, fists clenched. "Fuck you."

Roy's temper spiked. "Damn it, Edward-"

"What?" And suddenly it wasn't a boy sitting between his arms, but a man, and defiance had turned to amusement. Mismatched hands trailed up the front of Roy's jacket. "You're such a bastard sometimes." he said, shifting on Roy's desk, spreading his legs and placing his feet on the armrests of Roy's chair. Edward's hands hooked into the collar of Roy's jacket, and he pulled him down-

His alarm clock went off, shrill and amazingly irritating. He reached over and shut it off, then pressed his face into his pillow. _Fuck. _

Of all the people to be attracted to, why did it have to be Fullmetal?

_Because you're a suicidal idiot._ Roy told himself, and got out of bed.

* * *

"It's snowing!" Anya said happily, twirling around with her arms out stretched, her black coat and colorful scarves flying.

Ed walked a good eight feet behind her and hoped she didn't get the idea to start chucking snowballs at him. It was just too early in the morning to engage in a snowball fight. He sipped his coffee, sighed blissfully and made a mental note to go back to that café often, because it was the best damn coffee he had ever had.

"General!"

Ed glanced up. He saw Anya run towards Roy, watched as she lost her footing and skid across the ice, pinwheeled her arms comically and finally slammed into Roy, knocking them both down, right into a pile of freshly shoveled snow. He winced.

"Ow." Anya sat up, clutching her head.

Roy pushed himself up to a sitting position, brushed snow out of his hair. "I'd say that about sums up the situation."

Anya grinned apologetically. "Sorry."

"It's fine." Roy said, ruffling her bangs and smiling at her. He looked up as Ed reached them.

"Being liked by Elrics is a hazardous occupation, wouldn't you say?" He grabbed Roy's hand, pulled him up. He turned to Anya next, hauled the girl up by the back of her jacket and brushed her off. "Slow down, monster. Next time you'll break something." He turned back to Roy. "You okay?"

Still brushing off his coat, Roy nodded. "Fine."

Ed nodded. "Going to be soaked, though." He handed his coffee to Anya, then clapped his hands and touched them to the front of Roy's coat. The alchemical reaction rippled over him, sank into his clothes. Warmth traveled outwards from Edward's hands and steam rose from his coat. "There."

Roy fought down the urge to shudder. It felt strange to have Ed's alchemy that close to his skin. "Thanks."

Ed blinked, seemed to realize his hands were still pressed to Roy's chest and stepped back half a step. He shrugged, then clapped again and gave Anya the same treatment.

The girl's eyes reflected the light and seemed to glow for a moment. She giggled. "That tickles."

Ed snatched back his coffee when he was done. "Right. Now- let's get going before Hawkeye decides to give us extra work."

"You mean gives _me_ extra work." Roy said dejectedly. "You're late all the time and she never gives so you much as a disapproving look."

"That's because she doesn't have to bully me into doing my work."

Anya took Roy's hand and tugged on it excitedly. "Uncle Al is coming to visit this weekend!"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! He and Winry. He said he's take me sledding!" Anya squeezed his hand. "You should come over and hang out with us, cause he misses you." She scowled. "And cause he won't play cards with Papa and me anymore, cause we cheat. But that's half the fun of the game!"

Roy glanced over at Ed, and found the younger man sipping his coffee happily, purposely ignoring him and Anya, leaving him alone with the girl's affections. Or maybe he really was that involved with his caffeine fix, if the half-lidded eyes and blissful expression were anything to go by. Ed's face was slightly flushed from the cold, and the slight breeze teased at his hair. He was in all black again today with the exception of a bright red scarf he hadn't bothered to knot right. Roy had always wondered if Ed knew how striking the color was on him. He doubted it.

Ed took another sip of his coffee, and his eyelashes fluttered, making Anya giggle and Roy try very, very hard not to think of what else could cause Edward to make that expression. "Mhmm." Or that sound. Ed held the cup out to Roy. "Here. You _have_ to try this. It is our ticket to never getting in trouble for being late again."

His gaze lingered for a second on Edward's lips. If it were anyone else, he would have leaned down and kissed them, tasting it that way, but he doubted Edward would appreciate the gesture, so instead he took the coffee and lifted it to his lips, took a cautious sip. He nearly moaned.

"See?" Ed asked.

"Where did you get this?" Roy asked, clutching the cup to his chest greedily.

Ed grinned. "You'll have to come with me next time and find out."

They shared the rest of it on their way to the office. They did not talk, just walked in companionable silence. Anya hummed under her breath and swung her and Roy's joined hands, occasionally sticking out her tongue and attempting to catch one of the big, fat snowflakes that were floating down lethargically. It was a nice way to start the day, Roy decided. Anya's innocent cheer and Edward's shoulder bumping against his every few steps.

The rest of the day carried the same happy, relaxed air. Ed and Anya hung around the office until around noon, when Anya started to fidget and doodle in the margins of her book and Ed suggested they head to the library before he dropped her off at Gracia's. He poked his head into Roy's office before he left, eyed Roy's workload and grinned evilly as he waved goodbye.

That night he fell asleep thinking of Edward. Fell into dreams of him. Hot, heavy dreams where Ed lay under him, moved beneath him, hard jerks of his hips that had Roy's fingers digging into golden thighs. Sweat slicked skin and all that glorious hair unbound. Amber eyes hazy, lips parted on gasps of pleasure.

"Roy."

He woke aching, and when Roy reached down to relieve himself, it was Edward he imagined.


End file.
